A Moment of Clarity
by Cipher44
Summary: Chap. 13 UP: After being betrayed by Noble, Cruz is faced with the cold hard truth of her crusade, and what she has become
1. Chapter 1: Faith

**Title**:A Moment of Clarity

**Author**: Cipher44

**Revision: **4/9/05

**Primary Email**: Third Watch

**Rating**: R. (Violence, profanity and mature themes).

**Summary**: Since the story is still technically a W.I.P., I'll wait until it's done to add a summary.

**Spoilers:** Season Three: _ The Long Guns_. Season Four: _The Chosen Few, Crime and Punishment 1 & 2, Collateral Damage 1 & 2, 10-13,_ _ Everybody Lies, In Confidence ,Closing in_, _The Price of Nobility_. Season Five: _Fury, Family Ties 1 & 2, Purgatory, Spanking the Monkey, Monsters_; through to mid-Season Six.

**Thanks:** BIG THANKS to all who have reviewed up till now! You've kept me going (although I admit the going has often been slow)! Also, many thanks go out to the folks at the Fanfiction Medical and Law Yahoo mailing lists, for all their help with the police procedure and medical stuff. I tried to keep everything realistic, but I've taken a few creative liberties here and there. Just little ones ;)

**Disclaimer**: With the exception of Detective Brent Schaeffer (who, FYI, would probably be played by Ron Perlman, if the part needed to be cast) and a few other minor background faces here and there, none of the characters are mine. But you knew that already, didn't ya? Just having a bit of fun here, no harm intended :)

******_Notes - Revision 12/17/04_**

This story began life over a year ago, as a guess at how the Season Four hotel room shooting might turn out, and it ended up growing into something else entirely. So basically it's an Alternate Universe story that uses the Price of Nobility as a springboard, and though it switches between three perspectives (Bosco, Faith and Cruz), it ended up with a heavy Cruz focus, going deeper into the nature of her relationship with her sister, why she felt the leader of a biker gang could somehow be directly responsible for her overdose, and how Lettie tied in to her choice of career - all stuff that was only briefly touched on or glossed over in the show (while Bosco got to milk the angst-thing for all it was worth when his brother died).

Even though this story kicks off from the end of Season Four as an AU timeline, there are still plenty of references and material from Seasons Five and Six, plus cameos from a few newer characters. Keeps the story relatively fresh, and besides - I had to get Jelly in there somewhere :)

One last note: the dialogue from the end of _The Price of Nobility_ (up until Faith flips the gun and the shots are heard) is reproduced here exactly as it is spoken in the episode. Needless to say, no plagiarism was intended with this - it was just to set the scene for the rest of the story.

Now, at long last, I'll shut up and let you get to the story ;)

* * *

**A Moment of Clarity**

_by Cipher44_

**Part I**

Chapter 1

_Faith_

I.

Faith Yokas left the Fifty-Fifth Precinct at two minutes to eight riding on a lie.

It was only a little lie, very _white_, and could arouse no suspicion; she simply told the Lieutenant that she was taking off to get something to eat. In its own little way it was cunning. She had been working five tedious hours behind the desk and so she was fully entitled to a meal period. She even put a little extra polish on it, asking Swersky if he'd like her to bring something back for him. A tasty treat of some variety, perhaps. Swersky said no, that was all right, his wife had packed him a diet meal because his blood sugar had been through the roof just lately. This was delivered with the absent disdain of a man who still loves his sweets but is nevertheless resigned to the frailties of his age. He did not ask Faith where she was going or what she would be eating, and for that she was glad. Friendly banter could have been easily shuffled through with another lie, but Faith did not want to lie to Swersky again. Not even another little white one to get him off her back. It was a matter of simple principle.

And besides, the first one was apt to get her into enough trouble.

But Swersky didn't ask a thing. Swersky, in fact, barely even looked up; he'd bought the lie easily, and there was never any reason to believe he wouldn't. Faith signed out a radio and a squad car and walked out the door without a second look back, knowing that by tomorrow morning she could well be sitting in a holding cell in the very same building.

There was a part of her that wondered if this sudden and complete surrender of all good sense might mark the onset (and a _spectacular_ onset) of some strange kind of mid-life crisis. She'd never really given the idea that she could even _have_ a mid-life crisis much thought before now - to her the concept was vague and somewhat silly, confined to the stereotype of the middle-aged man trying to reconnect to his youth with a cherry-red Ferrari and a call-girl on each arm. It was a cliche, a _bad _cliche, and as such hard to take seriously. _Mid-life Crisis_. Fodder for hack cartoonists, and besides which there was that troubling - and insulting - _mid_ part in there. _Mid_-life.

Faith didn't feel very _mid_ just yet.

But she supposed all of that was just a fancy way of sidestepping the point - a mid-life crisis (whatever such a thing might be when stripped of its pop-culture wrapping) was all about irresponsibility. _Conscious_ irresponsibility. Sometimes _gleefully_ conscious irresponsibility. Fun for the people immersed up to their eyeballs in it, she supposed ... but pretty pathetic to the objective, casual observer.

Pathetic.

_Like a policewoman, for example,_ Faith thought as she headed for the Melrose Hotel and her possible doom._ Respected by her colleagues, clean record, mother of two, sitting up in Holding facing a breaking and entering charge. And I would have thought a mid-life crisis would mean seducing the bag-boy at the A&P. Which wouldn't be much more intelligent or responsible that what I'm doing here. But it'd probably be a lot more fun. _

She snorted laughter in spite of herself. That was something else - this nervous humor that kept creeping up on her. It was inappropriate, irritating, and the fact that it was an obvious defense mechanism didn't cut much ice with her. She was becoming more and more afraid that some part of her might really be enjoying the thrill of it all, might even be _getting off_ on it - some giddy, capering little Anti-Faith, the same part of her that had nudged her into offering to bring Swersky something sweet. There was nothing terribly hilarious in any of this. Not one thing. Putting her career and good name on the line for someone she now despised was something that went a tad further than _irresponsible_. She was coming to believe it was something that skirted the edge of _nuts_.

Breaking and entering.

Actually, it would probably end up as something more along the lines of gaining entry under false pretenses. Sounded a bit more elegant when you said it that way, didn't it? No actual _breaking_ involved. Plenty of _entering_, though, and it was the _entering_ part that worried her.

She had only a sketchy idea of why she was doing it, and she supposed that made the whole business that much worse. She had a little grocery list of possible reasons, but they were all pretty vague and didn't hold up well under scrutiny. There was the matter of Maurice Boscorelli, her ex-partner and a man to whom she owed nothing - no reason to be found there. There was the matter of Sergeant Maritza Cruz, head of the elite Anti-Crime plainclothes unit, a woman who could be the ACLU's poster-child for everything wrong with major American police departments and was also, in Faith's humble opinion, a pitiful excuse for a human being ... but there was no reason there, either. She could dismiss Cruz - and Bosco too, for that matter - and die happy never hearing mention of either of them again.

But there _was_ the matter of the gun.

The gun was at the center of it. Her little adventure in burglary amounted to a search and retrieval mission, and the gun was what she was going for. She knew what Bosco had already told her about it, and she had filled in most of the blanks by asking a few discreet questions around the station. Both the gun and the room she would soon be tossing belonged to Aaron Noble, a journalist and author who specialized in writing colorful exposes on police corruption and sympathetic biographies of dangerous criminals. Current rumor had it that he was also addicted to crystal meth. As Faith understood it, Noble had gotten himself into some trouble with the Disciples biker gang and ended up having to kill one of them. Clear-cut self-defense, apparently. Shouldn't have been a problem.

But there _was_ a problem, and the problem came from Cruz. Noble had been acting as a Confidential Informant for her, but since a C.I. can't be involved in any other crime, the biker shooting would have taken him out of the game. Cruz, of course, wouldn't accept that; she had given him back his gun and ordered him to hide it. This had still left her with a dead biker and, true to her nature, Cruz had turned around and pinned the killing on some street kid named Stevie Nunez.

So, as Faith understood it, the gun was the only thing to tie Noble to the shooting, and therefore the only way to haul Nunez's unfortunate ass out of the fire.

Faith knew almost nothing about Nunez beyond his name. At the moment, however, she was sticking to Nunez as her primary reason for breaking into Noble's room. It seemed the most comfortable, not to mention the most honorable and therefore the easiest to rationalize. She didn't like the idea that she was doing this for Bosco. It was true that there was something almost _motherly_ in it, something almost huffy and exasperated - Bosco had made a mess, and she had grimly resigned herself to helping him mop it up. But only because of Nunez. Junkie or biker or whatever he was, he still amounted to an innocent bystander. She was not here because of Bosco ... though to his credit he was finally trying to turn the tables on Cruz, who had been leading him around by the nose (_not to mention the dick_, her mind added with a little pucker of revulsion) for months. She was not even doing this to thwart Cruz, because that would raise a little _hypocrisy_ issue; Cruz was a liar and as much a criminal as anyone she locked up, a dirty cop who routinely broke the law she was supposed to be defending ...

... and would you look at this - that was _exactly_ what little Faith was doing right now. To destroy thy enemy you must become thy enemy. Wasn't there some little saying that went like that? Faith thought there was. But it didn't make her feel any better.

No, this was all purely for Nunez, some guy she'd never even met and probably never would. This was simply to make sure an innocent man didn't go to jail. No deeper than that, no more complicated than that.

And, she reminded herself, it was important to remember something else: whatever came out of this, it would still change nothing between her and Maurice Boscorelli.

* * *

Faith had never expected getting into the room to be a problem, and it wasn't. She used her uniform and a smile and another easy lie or two (oh, they _do_ come easier with practice, don't they? _My_, yes), and before she knew it she was standing in front of Noble's door with the keycard clutched in her hand. Her employee escort had wanted to take her right to the door, but Faith had rudely snatched the card and left the woman in the elevator. The escort was now watching her from there with a touch of mild disapproval. No doubt lamenting rude cops. Rude New York cops.

_If she thinks I'm a bitch, she ought to spend sixty seconds in an elevator with Sergeant Cruz._

Faith waited for the elevator to slide shut and bear the woman away. Then she turned to Noble's door and made a ridiculous little show of knocking. Bosco had promised to lure the writer away from his room on the pretense of a meeting with Cruz, thus giving Faith her opening. Sounded good enough in theory, but it assumed that Noble would agree to the meeting without having to be coerced. All signs pointed to Noble being the obstinate type, so she supposed there was the possibility that he was still here.

But all of that was neither here nor there - she just felt a bit better making a token effort at legal entry.

There was no answer, no shuffling or footsteps or _I'm coming_'s from inside the room. She counted off ten seconds and decided Noble really wasn't here; Bosco had promised to lure him away, and Bosco had done just that.

For the first time in a long time, he'd proven trustworthy.

Which was sort of a pity. Faith didn't have the slightest idea how she would have explained her presence here if Noble had actually answered the door, but on balance she thought having to cook up a half-assed explanation would have been a lot better than what she had to do now.

She didn't hesitate, though - any hesitation at this stage would be disastrous. Heart fluttering, Faith slid the card through the reader next to the doorknob and went right in.

* * *

The first thing that struck her about the room was its size. The Melrose was not a cheap place to stay for anyone; Noble was a minor celebrity, and as such had paid for the biggest and the best.

The second thing that hit her was that the place was a hopeless mess. As classy as the room was, the dominate theme here was _clutter_. The place had a distinct lived-in feel - Noble apparently didn't waste any time making a place his own. Every desk, every endtable, every possible hiding place for a handgun appeared to have been pressed into some kind of use. A darkened laptop sat on a desk littered with papers and coffee cups and candy wrappers. Another table held boxes containing more papers and files and crumpled notes; the boxes looked as if they'd split at the seams if she so much as breathed on them.

She had been anticipating a clean, rather sterile hotel room, a place where she could easily distinguish the places where Noble had tampered from the places he'd left alone. But it appeared he had stuck his nose into everything here.

That meant the gun could be anywhere in this. _Anywhere_.

_The artistic temperament_, she thought anxiously as she moved inside. _The messy right-brained type who never picks up after himself. Wonderful. _

She had time, though. She had plenty of time, so there was no need to get all wound up. She would stick to the plan - get in, get the fucking gun, and get out. And it would all be done with a cool head ... plus an optimistic thought or two to prod her along. There was no safe in the room - that was lucky. It would have been an obvious hiding place, but getting the keycard had been delicate enough, and Faith doubted she could have strong-armed something as sensitive as a safe combination from the hotel staff. (Cruz probably could have, but Faith - burglar or not - was not _that_ far gone yet.) She had a lot of ground to cover, but she didn't think she'd hit any snags. With luck Bosco would keep Noble out all evening.

She had plenty of time. No pressure.

She thought she might even pick up a coffee and a donut or two for Swersky on the way back to the Five-Five. To hell with his diet meal. Better to die happy.

The search was quick and efficient and methodical; she moved from one piece of furniture to the next smoothly, desk to table to the boxes of files and notes and on from there, falling into a natural rhythm, making a mental checklist of the places she'd already looked, pushing aside Bosco and Cruz and Noble and thoughts of spending the next day behind bars in her own precinct, and just doing her job the way she'd always done it.

Eleven minutes later she had completed the living room.

There was no gun.

She moved into the bedroom and started the process over again. Calm and efficient and methodical.

Still no gun.

Getting a bit antsy now (but still calm, still keeping a cool head, you bet) she went into the bathroom, which was surprisingly small and cramped for such a swanky apartment. It took only two minutes to complete a search there.

But there was still no gun.

Faith went back into the living room and stood perplexed. She had made good time, but she had hit all of the usual predictable hiding places and there was no gun to be found. And there was something else, a very nasty little possibility that she tried to push down, only to have it pry its way to the top of her mind anyway; the more she thought about it, the more she was sure Noble must have taken the gun with him. Why _shouldn't _he take it with him? Why leave it here just because Cruz _told_ him to?

Faith looked around helplessly, sweeping a slightly shaky hand back through her hair. Her nerves were getting the better of her, her heart thudding heavily in her chest. Cold, anxious sweat prickled its way down the center of her spine. There was no going back, no undoing what she'd done; the room was now a picture-perfect burglary. She had tossed the place for nothing, she would be found out, she would lose her job, she would be charged and disgraced. And Cruz ... Cruz would probably get one hell of a kick out of that, seeing holier-than-thou Faith Yokas go down in such a cornball and stupidly pointless way ... and then she would go right ahead with what she was doing to Nunez without a second thought.

But worst of all would be the first family visit. Fred and Emily and Charlie, all looking through the bars at her with identical expressions of shellshocked disappointment. Emily's reaction would be particularly interesting. Kind of hard for a teenage girl to take all those _responsibility_ lectures seriously when dear old mom is sitting in the tank. And then Charlie, God, he was only eleven, what would he think -

_Cut this weak-sister crap, now! The damned gun is _here_, it _has_ to be! I'm not gonna panic. I will _not_ panic. I will look again. But think. Think for a minute first. _

Faith paused. Closed her eyes. Took a long, slow breath, and then opened them again. She looked around the room again, allowing her eyes to skip gracefully from one object to the next, absorbing it all, checking to see if she'd missed something, not rushing through it, taking it slow and deliberate. _Calm and methodical_, that was the order of the day here, the running theme. She spun in place like a human surveillance camera, twirling on her heel in a way that would have been comical had anyone been in the room to see her.

Her eyes landed on the couch.

The couch cushions. Where did kids hide their dirty magazines and other shameful little vices? Under their mattresses, usually ... but Noble's mattress was clean (well, clean in the sense that there was no _gun_ under it; Faith didn't think Noble suffered any lonely nights) and couch cushions were a mattress' closest relative, weren't they? And from everything she'd heard about him, Aaron Noble didn't amount to much more than a sneaky kid himself.

Of course she didn't really expect the gun to be concealed in such a stupid, flimsy place - he had taken it with him, she was sure - but she'd overlooked the cushions the first time, and it was something else to try.

She went over and started by removing the little pillows from each end, one of which was heavier than the other and made a dull metallic _thunk_ when she set it down on the coffee table.

Faith almost froze up, and for a few agonizing seconds was unable to turn around and check the source of the sound. She was not quite ready to believe that she had actually _heard_ that sound at all, that she had found what she'd come for and could now, at last, get the hell out of the mess she'd somehow gotten herself into. She didn't quite trust herself to be that lucky.

Then she was unzipping the pillow, fumbling a bit (she would tear it open with her teeth if necessary) and there it was. She drew it out, mercifully remembering to pick it up with a handkerchief.

It was an old automatic, a battered German Walther that looked like it might be more at home in a war museum. She stared down at it, her face slack even though the sense of relief was so sweet and so palpable that it made her thoughts run silly; the feeling was absurdly like getting let out of school on a snow day. She reminded herself that she might still face some trouble over this down the road, but putting Cruz on the chopping block for wrongful arrest might be worth it. Because if Cruz went down for _that_, more might follow - Faith was betting the woman had more than a few skeletons in her closet, just begging to have the light cast on them. And now that Faith was actually holding the gun in her hand, she was discovering just how much she _would_ enjoy seeing that: Maritza Cruz, standing in a courtroom wearing an orange jumpsuit from Women's Correctional. Very stylish. _It's definitely you, kid_. Add handcuffs to the ensemble and you had a fashion statement Faith could really get behind.

And best of all, she could leave now. Hand in Noble's keycard and go straight back to the Five-Five.

_No_, she corrected herself immediately, still riding that dizzy, lightheaded wave of relief. _No_,_ I've got one stop to make on the way back; I'm gonna pick up a big box of donuts for Swersky. For both of us. Every last one a chocolate-glaze. I am, after all, on a meal period._

The voice came from behind her then, soft and almost conversational in tone, its rich, purring quality unmistakable:

"One day we're gonna settle our business."


	2. Chapter 1, Part II

Chapter 1 Continued

II.

This time Faith did freeze up.

Everything below her chest seemed to become suddenly distant and numb, her guts running cold and limp and watery. At the same time her limbs tingled warmly as her muscles were bathed in a fresh surge of adrenaline. While rummaging through Noble's things she had developed a mild urge to pee, and there was a bad second or two when she really thought her bladder was going to let go. She managed to hold on, though, and that was good. It was good because what she had just heard simply _couldn't be_. There was _no way_ the owner of that voice could be in this room with her. No rational way, no physical way.

And yet she had heard it.

_I'm so damned keyed up_, she thought desperately. _That's all. I imagined it. That's it, just an auditory hallucination. Simple explanation._

Faith turned around, very slowly.

Sergeant Maritza Cruz was standing on the other side of the room. She was positioned neatly between Faith and the exit.

She had also drawn her weapon.

There was something too perfect about it. There was something about this that felt truly _preordained_, just too much like a setup, too much like a _sting_. At almost the precise moment she lays her hands on Noble's gun - just as she's about to _leave_ with it - Cruz appears in the doorway like a fucking spook. _With her gun drawn_.

How? How could Cruz possibly have known she was here?

Well, that was a simple one, wasn't it? Bosco had betrayed her.

_No_, she thought immediately. _No, absolutely not. He'd never sink _that_ low ... and besides, it doesn't make any sense. _

But that still left the question: how could Cruz have known that Faith - that _anyone_ - had come here looking for that goddamned gun?

_What does it matter _how? _She's here, and more importantly, she's _armed.

Armed, yes. Faith's eyes kept wandering back to the Glock in Cruz's right hand. _You don't do that_, she thought faintly. _You just don't do that, you don't pull your gun on another cop. You don't pull your gun on _anybody_ unless you expect to have to use it. They teach you that. It's one of the _first things_ they teach you._

"Take it easy, Sergeant," Faith said carefully.

Cruz moved into the room, as deft and quiet as a cat, the gun still held loose and casual at her side. She smiled thinly. "You got a smart mouth, Yokas."

"Look," Faith began gingerly. "All this means ... uh ... is that you lose a C.I. ..."

Cruz moved closer, though she was still between Faith and any chance at escape. Her dark eyes blazed, but there was a kind of cynical humor there as well. "How'd you turn him on me? Hmm?"

_Careful. God, be careful here ..._

"Bosco?" Faith said.

"He was gonna be my star," Cruz hissed.

Faith's eyes narrowed at that, the old anger rising up and momentarily blotting out this new jam she was in. _Star,_ she thought sourly. _As in somebody you can stick in front of you, so if your stupid little games blow up in your face, that poor bastard takes the fall and not you. Great. Star. Right._

Outwardly, Faith only shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. There had been a time when she might not have hesitated to say any of that to Cruz's face, but not anymore. Not here and now, certainly. Because of the gun. Which was to say _Cruz's_ gun - not the relic she had just pulled out of the pillow. Cruz was not known for keeping a cool head - that was true. And of course Cruz had once threatened to beat her up - to actually _physically assault her_ - in the middle of a crowded hospital. But Faith had never actually been _frightened_ of her before now.

But seeing that gun in her hand, the implication behind it, the unspoken threat, Faith was most definitely frightened. It was way over the line, even by Cruz's standards.

Still, she risked: "Yeah, well ... uh ... he figured you out all on his own."

Cruz grinned humorlessly. "We both know he's not that smart."

"Faith?"

She balked slightly. It was Bosco's voice. Coming from the hall.

_Strange_, Faith thought. _I should be relieved_.

_And I'm not. _

"_Mommy?_" Cruz mocked savagely. Her eyes had gone empty, almost vapid, and that was almost more unnerving than the physical threat. Her gun was still loose at her side, but Faith could see the tendons and muscles in her hand twitching, her thumb rubbing the grip in quick, somehow insectile little strokes.

"Bosco!" Faith called, surprised at how strong and sure her voice sounded. "I'm back here!"

Bosco entered the room. He saw Faith backed into a corner, saw Cruz standing in front of her ... and then saw Cruz's gun. For the most part, his expression didn't change. He did, however, cast another doubtful glance between the two women, as if surprised that neither of them was dead on the floor.

_Stick around, Bos. The night's still young. _

"All right," he said. This was mostly directed at Cruz. "Let's just calm down. All right? Cruz?"

Cruz only stared at him, eyes still flat and reptilian. Behind them, Aaron Noble appeared in the doorway, shambling into the room red-eyed and thoroughly confused. Nobody was supposed to know about this crazy little operation, and now _everybody_ was here, including Noble himself. It was almost funny. At this point Faith wouldn't be all that surprised if Swersky was next through the door. Perhaps to tell her that he'd had a change of heart, that he'd like her to bring him an extra-large coffee after all. Triple sugar, triple cream.

"Get out, Noble," Cruz snapped, barely acknowledging him.

Bosco shook his head and motioned for Noble to stay. "No. No."

"Get _out_, Noble," Cruz repeated.

"_No!_" Bosco snapped. "You know what? He stays right there."

Noble's eyes, which to this point had been jittering uncertainly all over the room, finally landed on the gun that Faith was holding in her left hand. His face, already a sickly, cadaverous gray, went even paler. "I thought you were gonna take care of this," he said in a strangled voice.

"Out!" Cruz yelled at him.

"What are the police doing here?"

"Out _now!_"

Noble shrugged. "All right ... but ..."

"I'll find you," Cruz said, and suddenly her voice was soft, almost gentle. The change was eerily quick and somehow grotesque.

Noble shrugged again. "Okay but ... I mean ...its' been a while ..."

_I should have known_, Faith thought disgustedly. _Cruz is feeding that sack of shit meth. Surprise surprise. The Crank Fairy strikes again. _

Across from her, Bosco caught her eye. "Come on, Faith," he said softly, almost in a whisper. It was as if he actually expected Cruz, whose attention was now focused on Noble, not to notice them. "Let's go."

Too much to hope for.

"The gun stays with me," Cruz said flatly.

Bosco shook his head. "We're locking Noble up. That's it."

"What?" Noble screeched. Then, almost sulkily: "I gave you Buford's address ..."

"No-one is getting locked up here!" Cruz shouted.

"I don't want to step on anything else," Bosco said. "I don't want to put you in front of anything. I just want to do the right thing." He paused. "It won't affect you."

It was the wrong thing to say, and Faith could see that Bosco knew it the moment it was out. The air seemed to grow almost physically heavier, and to Faith it seemed as if she had just felt the entire balance of the situation _tilt_, as if they'd all just slid a little closer to some unthinkable disaster, and a half-coherant bubble of thought-

_ (she's going to do something she's going to do something unless _ I _ do something)_

rose up from her subconscious and burst almost immediately.

"It won't affect me?" Cruz said, very softly ... and then, predictably, she exploded: "That son of a bitch Buford _killed_ my _sister!_ Let me tell you something about _doing the right thing_. There's a problem, _we_ fix it" - here Cruz actually hammered the barrel of her pistol against her own chest to illustrate the point, and Faith found herself desperately wishing it would go off - "_Anti-Crime_. No-one asks how. And _we don't tell them_." She turned to Faith, grinning savagely. "See, this country has a little system that protects the worst of us and pisses on the good, and what we need are cops who aren't afraid to do what it takes!" She thrust her hand out. "_Now give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job!_"

_Back to your job_, Faith thought numbly, deeply unsettled now, the blood rushing in her ears. Cruz was not going to back down. Absolutely not. It was something that went beyond Noble, beyond the gun, beyond the case; it was simply not in Cruz's nature to give in.

And yet if Faith handed Cruz the gun, she would be helping her convict an innocent man of murder. She would be an accessory to that, and that simply wasn't an option.

Oh, this was bad. Oh God, was this ever _bad_. This was, Faith thought with a hysterical kind of good humor, a new contender for the worst situation she'd ever been in. She'd started into it worrying about breaking and entering and now she was mired in _this_, and goddam it, _none of this should even be her problem_. It was_ Bosco's_ problem, and she had sworn to him and to herself not to clean this one up. Hadn't she sworn that? He'd dug himself into a pit, and now here she was, right down in it with him.

And all over one gun. It all came down to _one God-damned gun_.

It was still swaddled in its greasy handkerchief in her left hand. An ancient Walther P-38 that looked like it had seen a lot of action; its frame was battered and scratched, its grips worn and friction-taped, but it nevertheless looked to be in good working order - and there was at least one dead biker who could attest to it. Faith wondered vaguely where Noble had acquired it. She was sure there was probably a story behind it, long-winded and interesting and falling several miles short of legal. She could feel its cold weight, the nub of the safety catch pressed softly against her palm, as if suggesting a more direct - and drastic - resolution to this little standoff.

She stared hard at Cruz, meeting her eyes, remembering something Sasha Monroe had said on a night that seemed like a thousand years ago.

_She acts tough_, _but she's weak. And the weak always get what's coming._

Time was running out. A decision would have to be made.

"Give me the damned gun!" Cruz repeated.

Beside her, unnoticed by anyone except Faith, Bosco quietly drew his weapon.

And that was when Faith _knew_, that was what brought the truth crashing home to her. Because in that moment she saw that Bosco knew it as well, that at last _he_ finally understood the real truth behind Cruz's corruption, behind her misguided and twisted sense of justice, behind her single-minded ruthlessness, behind the almost ridiculously street-tough exterior.

Behind the fact that she could come into a room with her gun drawn on a fellow officer.

It was a simple truth, really, and it was deeply frightening.

Cruz wasn't _weak_.

Cruz was _insane_.

And that meant that right now, she was liable to do _anything_. Anythingat all. Unless someone acted first.

Faith's thoughts were clear and cold and oddly detached through what happened next; she thought again of her husband and her children, wondered what they would do if, in the next few seconds, she wasn't fast enough. What they would do without her if she came out of this mess on the wrong side of the law. She wondered how Emily would turn out, what kind of woman she would become. What kind of man Charlie would grow into. She wondered if Fred would re-marry. She wondered if they would stay in the apartment or move. She wondered if they would even stay in New York.

She wondered all of these things as she brought Noble's Walther up, holding it out butt-first, as if to hand it over to Cruz. She wondered all of these things as she transferred the gun from left hand to right in a smooth, unbroken and almost elegant motion, feeling her finger slip easily through the trigger guard, watching the sight line up over Cruz's chest.

Cruz saw what Faith was about to do and raised her own weapon, one-handed and almost casual. The Sergeant's face registered absolutely no surprise, that expression of dark hate never showing so much as a crack.

Faith squeezed the trigger. She had perhaps a tenth of a second to wonder if the gun was even cocked, let alone loaded. She'd never even thought about it, never even had a chance to check.

Then the old German pistol kicked hard in her hand, and just like that it was done, it was done and all bets were off.

Cruz's left shoulder did not so much sprout a bullet hole as it seemed to actually _explode_ in a thick red cloud, the impact simultaneously spinning her and driving her backwards. Her own weapon went off a half-second later, more or less on reflex. Faith felt the bullet drone past her head with what felt like perhaps an inch of clearance. Something behind her shattered glassily.

Bosco fired at almost the same instant. The bullet passed harmlessly through the space Cruz's head had occupied only a second before.

Cruz reeled back across the room, her good arm pinwheeling wildly, and yet somehow she managed to stay on her feet. She also kept a tight grip on her pistol and, incredibly, she was already trying to regain her balance and her aim.

Faith didn't think to try to shoot her again. Her conscious mind was still processing exactly what she had done; her instincts took up the slack and got her moving. She threw herself behind the couch where she'd found Noble's gun and pressed flat against the floor. She could still feel the wind of Cruz's bullet, the insectile buzz across her cheek, and her brain was already gibbering a hysterical mantra, over and over, _Am I shot? Am I shot? Am I shot? Am I -_

Cruz screamed. It was less a cry of pain than a cheated howl of rage that set Faith's teeth on edge. Then there was a muted thump, like a body falling to the floor. She tossed Noble's Walther aside, drew her own sidearm - a far more reliable Glock - and waited for the next shot.

Silence for three or four seconds.

Cruz was probably down. Surely, Cruz _had_ to be down. That was what the thump had been.

Then: "Drop it, Cruz!"

Bosco's voice.

Cruz hissed. Actually _hissed_, like a cat, and Faith suddenly found herself having to suppress a hysterical wave of the giggles.

"_Cabron!_" Cruz snarled at him, her voice tight with pain and startled anger. "You -"

"_I SAID TOSS THE WEAPON!_" he screamed. There was a note of high, alien hysteria in his voice that Faith didn't care for at all.

A beat or two. Faith heard something that might have been the _snik_ of a releasing safety catch.

_Do I stand up and help him?_ she thought wildly. _Would that make things worse?_ _Oh God oh God oh my God what have I done what have I started here what -_

"Faith!"

Her hand tightened on her gun. The grips were already slick with sweat.

"Faith!" - that same note of hysteria again - "Faith, you all right?"

"Yeah!" she said, getting slowly to her feet. "I'm fine!"

_I think that might be a lie. _

The situation had changed considerably. Aaron Noble was now standing back against the far wall and appeared to be pressing himself into it as hard as he could, as if he thought he could somehow disappear through the plaster. His rheumy eyes were wide and unblinking. She wondered dimly why he hadn't tried to run when the shooting started.

Bosco stood in a textbook two-handed shooter's stance, weapon aimed down at Cruz, who had fallen to her knees. The left side of her face had been decorated by a fine scattershot mist of blood, her left arm hanging limp from a shoulder that was now a ragged, bleeding mess. And yet she was still upright, her face screwed into an expression that was equal parts pain and fury. Her eyes rolled wildly. She still held her gun in her right hand, raised but not pointed at anyone in particular.

At least until Faith popped up from behind the couch. Like a cobra, Cruz's gun arm homed in on her immediately.

"_Don't!_" Bosco hollered. "Don't, Cruz!"

Cruz hesitated, swallowing visibly. "The bitch shot me," she snarled, and there was so much mixed surprise and anger in her tone that it was almost funny. Faith felt the giggles working their way up her throat again and swallowed them.

"If you don't toss that gun," Bosco said. "_I'll_ shoot you."

_Blow her fucking head off, Bos_, Faith thought suddenly, _viciously_, and was immediately overcome with a kind of horrified shame.

Cruz turned on him and spat a long, sputtering flurry of Spanish Faith didn't understand, except for another fierce invocation of the word _cabron_. Then, in English: "You don't know what you just threw away, you -"

"Put the gun down or I'll kill you, Cruz."

It came out very soft. Very _un-_Bosco, in Faith's opinion, and she looked over at him uneasily. Cruz was obviously deranged, and Faith was beginning to have her doubts about him as well. She realized that even though she had her own gun trained on Cruz, the next move was Bosco's and Bosco's alone. That was a crazy way to think, but it was true. Faith might as well not even be in the room.

And Cruz was making no move to comply.

"You're under arrest," Bosco said, his tone almost pleading now. "Don't you get it? It's _over_, Cruz. I gave you a chance to do what's right. Now you're finished."

_Jesus, Bosco, don't tell her that, you might set her off, and _I'm_ the one looking down the barrel - _

"Arrest," Cruz said bleakly, as if the word was entirely new to her. She was swaying a bit now, eyes growing bleary and distant. Faith still couldn't understand how she could remain upright and coherent. Part of her body had been _vaporized_. Not just wounded - _vaporized_. The pain must be enormous, and she was clearly losing a lot of blood.

"Arrest?" she repeated, and suddenly her voice was strong again. She grinned. Faith thought she saw tiny flecks of blood on her teeth and felt the corners of her own mouth pull down in revulsion. "You're putting _me_ under arrest? You'd better reserve a cell for yourself while you're at it, Boscorelli! You're gonna take me down, huh? Well, I don't think I'll have any problems taking you down with me! You were there! You just remember that! Everything we did, you backed me up! You lied right along with me! It's your ass on the line before mine ... you ... you ..." Cruz's voice tapered off, her eyes rolling up to the whites. Faith hoped - _prayed_ - that this was it, that she would pass out and this would end.

She didn't, though. The woman seemed to possess a grim, defiant kind of strength that in some weird way hurt to look at, something that was wretched and somehow _animal_, like a rabbit chewing itself out of a trap; every time it looked like blood loss or shock or pain might be about to overtake her, she would almost visibly draw herself back together, her back straightening, her gun arm tightening up. Faith flashed on a childhood memory: sitting on her back porch in the summer, a Coke in her hand, a Coke or maybe a popsicle, idly watching bugs drown slowly in the sugar-water/detergent trap her mother always put out. The way their little legs would stop waving and their struggles would seem to have ended for good, and then there would come another stubborn quiver, a truculent little show of determination.

This looked exactly like that, and it should have been funny. But it wasn't. It was horrible.

"Put the gun down, Cruz," Bosco repeated in his creepy new _I'm-just-telling-you-how-it-is_ voice.

Cruz looked from one face to the other. Her eyelids flittered in a dreamy, stunned sort of way that almost - _almost_ - made Faith feel sorry for her. The Sergeant's face was laid open like a book, the central thought clearly readable: _This couldn't be_. It couldn't _be_. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go _at all_. She was _Cruz_. She was _Sergeant Cruz_, and Sergeant Cruz always won. She'd been playing this game for years and always won ... and she had lost everything in the space of seconds.

Pitiful or not, Faith only hoped that she knew it, that she was finally starting to understand the deadly, irrevocable nature of her new position here; she had two guns aimed at her and two cops against her and that was it, it was a simple case of surrender or die. She'd been on the other end of the same situation countless times herself.

Cruz's hand tensed on her pistol.

"I'll take you down, 'Ritza," Bosco said softly, and that was when Faith realized he was almost crying.

Another beat that seemed to go on forever. Faith watched the blood running down Cruz's left arm, the drops coalescing on her fingertips and falling to the floor. She thought she could actually hear it. _Pat-pat-pat ..._

Cruz threw her weapon down. Then, very slowly, she lifted her right hand and held it palm-out, giving it a sarcastic little shake (_there - see? Empty_) in an exaggerated display of surrender that was probably supposed to look defiant. To Faith it only looked petulant and childish. Cruz had gone very pale now, almost gray. She looked dazedly over at Noble, who was still cowering in the corner. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes were shiny with tears. She was going to crack. Fucking right she was. Any minute now she would crack, and Faith found in herself yet another wicked and shameful desire: she wanted to see it happen.

And it happened.

"_This'll make a great chapter in your book, won't it, you dickless son of a bitch?_" Cruz screamed at the top of her lungs, the tears overspilling and streaming down her cheeks, and then at last, _mercifully,_ she passed out, pitching sideways and hitting the floor with a flat, unremarkable thud.

She didn't move. After a moment Bosco let out a long, shaky breath and holstered his gun. Then he turned to Faith. He was shaking his head, slowly, wonderingly. His expression was that of a man who has just witnessed some cataclysmic accident; a passenger plane taking a nosedive into a schoolyard, perhaps.

"Jesus," he whispered hoarsely. "Jesus _Christ_, Faith ..."

Faith looked up slowly, met his eyes, held them ... and what she saw there overwhelmed her with a cold, bitter anger. Look at this - poor little Bosco is _shocked_! Heavens above! Poor little Bosco! He had put her in this position, he was the one who hadn't been able to see through Cruz, who hadn't been able to see what she really was, and now he was _shocked_ that it had come to this.

And this proved it, Faith realized, this proved that nothing had changed, nothing had changed and it was still the end of them. Even now, it was still the end of them, the end of their partnership, the end of their friendship. If this were a book or movie or TV show everything might be okay now, everything might just fall neatly back into place, go back to the way it was. Good triumphing over evil, partners coming back together to fight a common enemy - all of that tiresome romantic shit that never works in practice and doesn't even fare too well in theory. She had stuck by him through a lot, she had _put up_ with a lot, but the novelty had, after all these years, finally worn off. Taking care of, watching out for, and putting up with Maurice Boscorelli was no longer a hobby she was interested in pursuing. The novelty had worn off.

She thought it might have actually started to wear thin a long time ago.

And Maritza Cruz ... she didn't even enter into the equation.

Across the room, Cruz twitched and moaned thickly. About thirty seconds went by and there was nothing more.

"Is she dead?" Faith asked finally. The anger seemed to recede almost as quickly as it had come over her, and now her voice sounded flat, emotionless to her own ears. Distant, as if coming through on a bad radio transmission. Was that shock?

She thought not.

Bosco didn't answer her question, and made no move to check. Like her, he seemed to be still stuck in the moment, unable to get beyond the first few words of that one little profane statement of disbelief: "Jesus, Faith ... you ... you just ..." He gave up, shrugged helplessly, and uttered a humorless little chuckle.

Over by the wall, Noble's paralysis broke and he took a step towards the fallen Cruz.

"Don't touch her," Bosco snapped, hardly looking up.

Noble ignored him. He approached Cruz with slow, soft-footed caution, the way you might come up on a mortally wounded tiger. Then, throwing himself right into the metaphor, he actually prodded her side gently with the toe of his shoe.

"I said stay away from her!" Bosco yelled, and in the silence that followed Faith heard the first hint of approaching sirens. Somebody had called 911, and she was betting the police would make record time getting here. This was the Melrose, after all, and gunfights were just a tad out of place in a fancy hotel. There were taxpayers here. _Big-Fish_ taxpayers. People with clout. The cavalry was on the way to make sure no harm could come to New York's social elite.

Again, she should have been relieved. And again, she found she wasn't.

Something wet ran into her eyes and stung them. She blinked. Sweat. She was drenched in it. She swiped out her eyes and ran the back of her hand across her brow, and when she looked up she caught sight of a clock sitting on one of Noble's cluttered tables.

It was almost ten minutes to nine.

Less than an hour, then. Less than an hour ago she had been sitting behind the desk at the Five-Five. Safe. Safe with only Swersky and a mostly quiet precinct house for company, and now both might as well have been a million miles behind her. She remembered that she had been eating Twizzlers when she first came in for her shift. The package was probably still on the desk; the strips of licorice that remained in it would probably never be eaten. It made her feel like crying.

"They're coming," she said hollowly, and turned to the window. "God, Bosco, what are we gonna tell - "

_"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"_ Bosco screamed suddenly.

Faith jumped and swung around.

Noble was down on his knees, rifling through Cruz's pockets. His hands were now slick with blood, but the gore didn't seem to be bothering him much, and Faith suddenly understood why he hadn't tried to bolt when the shooting started; he wanted the drugs. The drugs Cruz always carried, her little insurance policy, her handy bit of instant blackmail. Noble wanted her dope, and he had simply waited until she was down to get it. The dragon was vanquished; her treasure was his for the taking.

This whole horrific mess was getting more gruesome by the second.

_Oh Jesus. I just want to go home. I want Fred. Hell, I even want my _mother_. I want to be eating someplace right now, I want to use my meal period for an actual _meal_, just sit in some quiet little café where they give cops free coffee and bagels, looking out onto the street, watching the world pass me by ..._

Bosco grabbed Noble, hauled him away from Cruz, and tossed him roughly back against the far wall. Noble glared back at him defiantly, his eyes dancing with a mix of excitement and desperation.

"Cruz carries dope, right?" Noble spat. "You know that. Sure you do. You were her little lapdog, right?"

Bosco bristled and took an ominous step forward, fists clenched. "_Excuse_ me? What'd you just say?"

Noble shifted uncomfortably, his mood changing abruptly from defiance to humble defeat. "She carries drugs," he whined. "That's why they call her Two-Bags, right? I need a little something to ... to grease the wheel, you know?" He looked at Cruz helplessly. "What's the harm if I take it? She'll never know ..." He smiled a bit. "You guys don't seem to be doing anything to help her anyway. Gonna just let her bleed out, huh?"

That stopped them all cold.

Faith exchanged another of those uneasy, complicated looks with Bosco, and then they both turned back to Cruz.

She had curled into a kind of semi-fetal position on her right side. The blood was pooling around her now in a corona, soaking into the carpet. But she was clearly still alive; she was _moving_, twitching, writhing weakly, and for the third time in as many minutes Faith's mind found her an analogy in the animal kingdom - Cruz now looked like a bug stuck on the end of a pin.

And they were doing nothing. _Nothing_. They hadn't even called it in, and sirens or no sirens, they should be doing at least that much. But they weren't. They were all just standing around being shocked.

That it had taken a dope addict to point this fact out to them made Faith feel ill.

Bosco, meanwhile, was still eying Cruz thoughtfully. Then he shrugged. "Maybe it's better this way, Faith." He looked up at her, lips twitching into an odd little smirk. "Right?"

She gaped at him. "What ...? Are you saying ... are you saying we should just let her bleed out on the floor? Is that it?"

"YOU_ WERE THE ONE WHO SHOT HER, FAITH!_" he bellowed at her, and then, abruptly, he lunged at her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her hard enough to make her teeth rattle. "_YOU SHOT A _COP_, FOR GOD'S SAKE! WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT? HUH? WHY?_"

She pulled violently away from him. "I _feared_ for my _life_," she said, voice soft and deadly. "She came here to get that gun, and she was ready to kill me for it."

Bosco laughed wildly. "Christ, Faith, can you _hear_ yourself? She would never - !"

"_Yes!_" Faith screamed back in his face, spittle flying from her mouth. "_She would!_ And you know why? Because she's _nuts_, Bosco! _That's_ why! Didn't you see her just now? Didn't you see the way she was waving that gun around? Weren't you fucking _listening_ to her? All she cares about is what _she_ wants, her own agenda, her own justice! All she thinks about is that goddam junkie sister of hers, about making somebody pay!"

"You don't even know what you're talking about!" he snarled, spinning away from her and throwing his hands up. "You don't know - "

Outside, the sirens were getting louder, and there was the first murmur of a brewing commotion in the hallway outside.

Faith barely heard it. "_I _don't know!" she shouted. "That's rich! Jesus, you're still under her spell, Bosco, you know that? Even now, after all you told me, you still can't - "

Noble suddenly burst out laughing.

Bosco grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him forward until their noses were almost touching. "What's funny? Huh? Let us in on what can be so damned funny about all of this, Noble. _Please_."

Noble shook his head, still laughing. "It's just ... you two, yelling your damned-fool heads off at each other, arguing ... arguing over what to do about her ... and ... and ..." He was overtaken again and had to work hard to control himself. "She's gonna _die_ over there, you dumbass! If she isn't dead by now! You think she's gonna _wait_ for you two to get this soap opera bullshit out of your systems? Look around! It looks like a fucking slaughterhouse in here, and you two're having a pissing contest about whose _ fault_ it is!"

Bosco released his grip on Noble's collar and stepped back. He looked blankly over at Faith. She continued to hold his gaze steady. They were both out of breath and panting, as if they'd just been led on some merry chase.

Then, mutely, Faith went over to Cruz and looked down at her, thinking uselessly about Lieutenant Swersky, about the desk at the Five-Five, about how much she would give to be back there again with her package of Twizzlers and for none of this to have ever happened. She found herself having to curb the urge to follow Noble's example and prod Cruz with her toe.

The gun had pulled to the right. Faith had been aiming for the center of Cruz's chest and had hit her in the shoulder instead, because in the last crucial millisecond the gun had pulled to the right. Of course it had - it was a piece of trash. Bad balance, crooked sights, shitty trigger-pull. If it had been her own sidearm instead of Noble's battered antique, Cruz would be dead with a bullet in her heart.

_And how much simpler that would have been_, a colder part of her said grimly - the same part, she suspected, that had urged Bosco to finish Cruz a moment ago. _How much simpler than this._

Still standing over Cruz, still making no move to actually get down and _help_ her, Faith glanced over at Noble's Walther. It was still right where she'd dropped it, on the floor behind the couch.

She looked at Cruz again. At the state of her shoulder. At the _damage_ she had inflicted. Faith wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light or perhaps just her own addled mind screwing with her perception, but she thought she could see exposed _bone_.

She looked at the Walther again with a kind of stupid horror.

_Christ, what the fuck is _in_ that thing?_

_Hollow-points, _that cold, foreign part of her answered impatiently._ Dumdums. Black Rhinos. Fucking sidewinder missiles. Who cares? It's not gonna matter much unless you get a grip and get down to business. Time to get your hands dirty, Yokas._

But she still couldn't quite bring herself to do it, she couldn't get down there and start working to save Cruz's life. To actually put her _hands_ on the woman. It would be like a weird kind of sacrilege, because there was still nothing in her - no real regret, no sense of remorse or even of _impending_ remorse. Maybe she was in shock, but she didn't think that was it. There was only a heady sense of how surreal it was. She'd killed three people in the line of duty, all criminals, all armed and desperate ... and now, as Bosco had so kindly pointed out, she had shot a cop. A _cop._ A corrupt and filthy excuse for a cop, but a cop all the same.

The sirens were very close now. Almost right under the hotel window, by the sound.

At last Faith knelt down next to Cruz, and as she did she had a crazy but truly disturbing vision, one that came close to making her stand right up straight again; Cruz coming awake and grabbing her wrist in an icy death-grip, like some unkillable horror-movie monster.

She knelt anyway, and of course no such thing happened. There was nothing even _slightly_ monstrous here, Faith could see that now, and it frightened her in some deep, essential way she couldn't quite define; the psychotic loose cannon with the itchy trigger finger and dead eyes was not here anymore ... if indeed she'd ever really been here at all. What was on the floor in front of her was just flesh and blood (_and so much blood, Jesus, so much of it, how can she still be alive?_), just a human being who had been torn open by a bullet. No monsters here, folks. No blind rage. No insanity.

In unconsciousness - or death - Cruz's face was uncharacteristically tranquil and really quite pretty.

_Please let her be breathing, _Faith thought numbly as she felt the blood begin to soak into her knees, as she felt her stomach turn lazily over on itself_. I really _need_ her to be breathing. I don't want to have to give her mouth-to-mouth. I don't think I can handle anything that perverse right now._

But Cruz was breathing; it was a bit shallow but it was regular. Faith began to apply pressure to her shoulder, wincing at the grisly warmth she put her hands in, the coppery-metallic smell of blood that drifted up into her nostrils.

_God, _I_ did this to her. Me. _

She squeezed her eyes shut, realizing with some surprise that she was on the precarious edge of tears.

"Bosco," she said breathlessly. "Bosco. Help."

There was no answer. Faith wasn't surprised - she wasn't really expecting one. She thought she might have sensed him leaving the room after she knelt. Gone to meet up with the help that was probably already making its way through the hotel to them. That was good - she hoped they hurried. She hoped he would _make_ them hurry. Cruz was now making a gurgling sound low in her throat that Faith didn't care much for. She really didn't want the woman to stop breathing. It wasn't just that she didn't_ want_ to give Cruz CPR - it was that she really didn't think she _could_.

But when she looked up she saw that Bosco was still there. Still there and standing with his arms at his sides, watching her impassively.

"Bosco," she said. Her voice wasn't much more than a shaky little squeak now. She was still keeping pressure on the wound, leaning her weight into it - she was now drenched almost to the elbows - but she didn't know how long she could keep it up. She could feel herself getting ready to be seriously sick. God, the smell, that shaved-copper smell ...

"Bosco, get down ... get down here ... and help me. _Please_."

Bosco didn't reply, didn't say yes, no, or boo. Didn't even twitch. Noble had come over to stand beside him, fidgeting with the drawstrings on the shabby-looking sweatshirt he was wearing. His eyes were round, owlish, staring down at this new drama with an ugly, morbid fascination.

"Bosco," Faith almost moaned. "Bosco, _please_ ... I need you to - "

And that was when, beneath her, Cruz vomited.

_Explosively. _

Faith's face was splattered with warm, foul-smelling muck. It got in her mouth. Her nose. It ran down under the collar of her shirt and down between her breasts. She uttered a revolted screech that somehow spiraled up into a long, anguished wail, and she felt something in the center of her mind start to _slip_. And yet somehow she kept enough of her wits to roll Cruz over onto her right side to keep the wretched woman from choking to death.

With no more pressure being exerted on it, Cruz's shoulder immediately began to gush again, soaking the front of Faith's uniform as she leaned over her.

"_BOSCO PLEASE PLEASE GET DOWN HERE AND HELP ME NOW PLEASE!_" The words came out in one long, unpunctuated shriek that must have carried across most of the floor. Bosco, however, was completely unmoved, staring down at her without the slightest hint of emotion - not even any of that tired old Maurice Boscorelli insolence - and in that moment Faith could have picked up Noble's Walther and put one of those devastating slugs right through the center of his face.

She knew there would be no help from him. None at all.

This one was hers and hers alone. Bought and paid for.

Sobbing, face streaked with blood and the half-digested remains of Cruz's lunch, Faith started to pressure the wound again.

Bosco kept watching her, saying nothing.

It was Aaron Noble who broke the silence, the sound cutting harshly through the air, something that was as obscenely improper as the question itself: "So what happens now?"

No-one answered him.


	3. Chapter 2: Bosco

Chapter 2

_Bosco_

I.

He found her in the women's washroom on the first floor, not far from the ER. She was washing her hands. Again.

"Get out," she snapped without looking up.

Bosco let the door hiss shut behind him and didn't move. He had no intention of allowing her to hide from him any longer - from him, and from everything else. The questions were flying (she had, of course, left _him_ to deal with them) and so far he had been able to use the general confusion to his advantage to sidestep them. It wasn't easy, though. It was, in fact, almost impossible, and each minute they refused to talk dug them both in deeper. A few things would need to be straightened out between them, and straightened out _fast_. If anything, Faith should be the one chasing after _him_. He was only trying to help her here. Maybe even _protect_ her.

Hell, he probably shouldn't even be doing that much.

_Lies breed lies. _

Yeah, and so they do. His Ma had been fond of that one. His Ma, who'd always trotted out her usual, almost absentminded excuses whenever Pop came home feeling mean and she appeared the next morning with bruises on her cheeks and neck. Or a puffy eye. Or if she happened to be hobbling along with one hand pressed delicately to the small of her back, as if someone had, oh, say, boxed her a few good ones in the kidneys. _I tripped and fell on my way to the store._ _I was changing a lightbulb and I lost my balance and cracked myself a good 'un on the coffee table._ And when she wasn't feeling very creative, she just fell back on the tried-and-true standby; _Can you believe it - I walked into a door!_

Lies breed lies.

Not much credibility behind that little piece of motherly advice. Looking back over the last eight months or so, Bosco supposed it hadn't made much of an impression on him.

Across from him, Faith paused in her washing just long enough to squeeze out a fresh - and ridiculously huge - helping of soap from the dispenser next to the sink.

Bosco stood just inside the door of the washroom and kept quiet, watching Faith go back to work on her hands, waiting to see if she would speak first. He didn't think she would; she looked pretty involved, one woman struggling with what she obviously thought should be a two-woman job. She'd washed up like this at least twice already. The first time had been in the hotel room, when the paramedics had arrived and relieved her of Cruz. She'd disappeared into the bathroom, leaving him to stammer his way through an explanation while she cleaned herself up. He supposed he could understand and forgive her that much - she _had_ been in a mess at the time, blood and puke from head to toe. She'd been in a mess because he had _left_ her to the mess, he'd left her to tend to Cruz all by her lonesome, and that was something he still didn't feel particularly bad about. As far as he was concerned, she'd earned the privilege.

But it seemed he had given her a bit of a complex. She'd gotten herself relatively decent in Noble's bathroom, and then she'd washed up again here at Mercy, just after they'd arrived. Now here she was, at it again. _Obsessively_. Her hair, tied in a neat ponytail at the beginning of the night, had come loose and was now hanging in straggly, uneven ropes. It made her look pathetic. Childlike. Waifish, even. Bosco wondered idly (and a bit sulkily) if this might be conscious and intentional on her part; here she was, just a poor little girl who got tired of being pushed around and punched out the schoolyard bully.

Oh, and now she feels _bad_. Aw.

Technically speaking, they shouldn't even be here at the hospital - they should be back at the Five-Five getting their asses chewed off. But he'd insisted on following the ambulance straight to Mercy, under the pretense of frantic concern for Cruz. The real reason, of course, had been to give both of them a breather, a chance to dip under the radar and think things through ... and maybe allow him to get a few answers of his own. Again, he'd taken the initiative. For _her_. To help _her_.

But coming to Mercy had only made it easier for Faith to hide from him, and he had lost what very little patience with her he'd had to start with. This might have started out as his mess - he would readily admit that - but it was now _Faith's_ mess. He'd help her get out of it as best he could, but that was still one thing she was going to have to be clear on - it was _her_ mess now.

Over by the sink, Faith drew another heaping handful of soap.

He waited - he'd already decided that he could wait all night. The only sound in the washroom was the running water. That, and _scrub scrub scrub_.

"Keep that up and you're gonna be polishing bone," he said mildly.

The feeble little joke died as soon as it hit the air, so he went silent again. After a moment she finally finished up and then looked at her hands, which were now a raw, fishbelly white.

"It's still under my fingernails," she said softly, and began to cry. She gripped the edges of the sink and leaned forward, her whole body trembling with fierce, soundless sobs. Bosco took a tentative step forward and she immediately put a warning hand up.

"Don't," she rasped. "Don't come near me, Bosco. Leave me alone."

"Faith -"

"I can't look at you."

He shrugged testily and stepped back, catching a noseful of some sweet, antiseptic smell; the handsoap she was using. The handsoap she was _overusing._ It was flowery and pleasant, and it made him want to puke.

_Because right now,_ Bosco thought humorlessly, _that is the smell of the shit hitting the fan_.

He couldn't understand it, couldn't get his head around it at all, just couldn't make the connection between the Faith Yokas he'd known for almost ten years and what he had watched her do less than an hour before. The situation had been tense, yes, maybe even dangerous, yes, but for it to come to _that_ ...

"Why'd you do it, Faith?" he asked softly, and he didn't like the small, helpless way it came out, more a plea than a question.

She was silent a long time, her head down, unraveling hair hanging in her eyes, still holding the edges of the sink for support. He had just decided she wasn't going to answer when she said, in almost a whisper, "I _told_ you. I believed that Cruz was an immediate physical threat. I believed she would shoot me if I didn't hand over Noble's gun."

"Then maybe you should have handed it over!" he bit out, knowing it was the wrong thing to say and at the same time not really caring. "We'd have figured something else out!"

Faith swung around angrily. "You seem pretty damned confused, Bosco! You come to me, you tell me that you're in a bad place, you ask for my help, _beg_ me for it. And like an idiot, I give it to you. And it puts me in a position where I have to use deadly force against another cop. Now all of a sudden it's like you're on her side again. So not only do I have to wipe up your shit, I have to remind you of why you dragged me into this in the first place!"

Bosco looked away, mouth twisting into a sneer. She was right. Of course she was right. But they were past all of that now - _this_ was where they were now, Faith had shot Cruz and whatever he had done, whatever kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into, it still couldn't touch this. If Cruz had actually made a dangerous move, if she'd actually _aimed_ the gun at Faith, then okay, sure, fire away ... but she _hadn't_. He would have shot her himself if she had, but she _hadn't_. And she wouldn't have, either. Cruz had been bluffing, trying to throw a scare into Faith. He'd believed that at the time, and he still believed it now. Intimidation was Cruz's style - it was the sum of her whole technique as a cop, really - and Faith should have known that. He'd drawn his own weapon with the same idea - a warning and nothing more, a way to out-bluff her. Cruz would have backed down eventually.

He'd had everything under control.

And then Faith had gone and turned it all upside-down. He couldn't figure it out, and he sure as hell couldn't forgive her for it. This was over the line, this was in an entirely new realm of -

"Alex Taylor is dead."

Bosco looked up sharply, startled out of the rat-run of his thoughts. "What?"

Faith grinned at him, a broken, malignant and mirthless grin he didn't much care for. It looked a little like the kind of grin that would have been more at home on Cruz.

"Alex. Is. Dead," she repeated, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully, as if talking to a halfwit. "Where the hell have you been the last half an hour? Don't you know what's been going on? Didn't you run into Davis yet?"

Bosco shook his head numbly.

Faith snorted. "You will. He should still be here. Told me everything. He brought her mother in earlier. It was that goddam car, Bosco, the one you and that crazy bitch were chasing this afternoon. It exploded. It was full of nitrous oxide, and it exploded. Taylor was up on top trying to help an elderly couple in one of the other cars when it blew. Davis said that it cut her pretty much right in half. And Johnson from the firehouse is up in the burn unit. He might lose his right eye. That is, if he makes it at all."

Faith's grin dissolved into a grimace of pained fury. "How does all of that strike you, Bosco? Hmm? Would you say it was worth it? You didn't even _catch_ that guy, so would you say it was worth Taylor getting blown clear of her own legs?" Faith's voice had been rising steadily, and now, suddenly, she was screaming. "_IT FUCKING CUT HER _IN HALF_, BOSCO! SO I'M ASKING YOU, WAS IT WORTH IT?_"

He shifted uncomfortably, dimly aware that half the hospital could probably hear her, his overtaxed, exhausted brain trying to absorb what she'd just told him. He wondered if she was lying, perhaps trying to guilt him further. Yes, that made sense - that _was_ what she was doing here, wasn't it? Trying to guilt him. Trying to turn things around on him. It wasn't enough that he'd already admitted that he was wrong - Faith had to shove his nose right down in it, make _him_ into the bad guy, despite the fact that _she_ was the one who had tried to kill Cruz in cold blood. She _had_ to be lying.

But of course he knew she wasn't.

Alex Taylor. _God._ He tried to call up an image of her; short, blonde, bright blue eyes, a pretty, somewhat cherubic face. Rated about an eight-out-of-ten on the Maurice Boscorelli screwability scale. Not a close friend by any stretch, but an acquaintance, a colleague, a familiar face in the day-to-day background of his job.

So she was dead. Okay, very sad. Nasty way to go. And Lieutenant Johnson, that was bad, too. But what was Faith implying here - that it was in some way _his_ fault? That it was Cruz's fault?

_Of course she's implying that, idiot. Because it _is _your fault_. _And Cruz's. _

So was it supposed to be their fault that Richard Buford had modified that monster of a car with nitrous? Was it their fault that Buford had abandoned it in the middle of the street and caused the accident in the first place?

_You didn't call the chase off. And why not? Why, Cruz, of course! Who else? Cruz and her drive, Cruz and her personal vendettas, Cruz and her _fanaticism_. And you were right there next to her, feeding it, feeding _off _it. You almost ran over a kid, for Christ's sake, and you barely even remembered it until later. _Much _later. _

Faith shook her head and leaned against the sink again. "You know what, Bosco? I can see that I'm still wasting my time on you. So leave. Get out."

He turned to do just that, and then paused when he realized that he'd actually come in here for a reason - and that reason still hadn't been addressed. He turned back to her and said, hesitantly, "I have to know what you want me to say."

"What?"

"I've been dodging the questions so far. Trying to give the impression ... I don't know, I've been trying to act like the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and I'm as confused as everybody else. But it isn't going over well, Faith. We're gonna have to tell them _something_ and it's gonna have to be consistent. I'm with you, though God knows I shouldn't be. I need to know what our story is gonna be, what you want me to say."

"Just tell the truth, Bosco," she said with tired bitterness. "Think for a minute - you _remember_ 'truth,' right?"

_(Lies breed lies, Maurice)_

"You fired on Cruz first," he said shortly. "You _want_ me to tell them that?"

Faith pressed her face into her palms and moaned. "Oh _God_, Bosco! How many different ways do I have to say it? Cruz had _drawn her weapon_. Cruz was _waving her weapon around in a threatening manner_. I knew what she was gonna do. I had what you might call a moment of clarity, and I defended myself." She looked up at him. "I was going to get in her way. And she wasn't about to let that happen."

He studied her for a moment, astounded as much by what he was seeing as he was by the crap coming out of her mouth. Her face was pale but for two spots of high color in her cheeks. Her eyes darted furtively around the washroom, never quite meeting up with his. She had washed her face and her hands (several times, and from the way she was now twiddling her thumbs he suspected she was already itching to do it again), but her uniform had a date with the incinerator - it was a stinking horror-show mess. And there was the hair. The Amazing Disappearing Ponytail. She looked crazed, witchlike, and he realized that she was scaring him, that this woman in front of him was so alien from the Faith he knew that she was really and truly scaring him.

And being scared just pissed him off even more.

"So Cruz would have shot you with me and Noble both standing right there?" he sneered. "I suppose next you'll be saying she would have shot all three of us."

"She was absolutely _gone_, Bosco. Her eyes ... there wasn't anything rational going on there at all. She was going to shoot me if I didn't hand over the gun, and maybe even if I did. I don't care whether you believe that or not. I _know_ it."

"Listen to me," he said calmly. "I once watched Cruz put a gun to a guy's crotch to scare him away from her sister. Right? _My_ gun. She took my gun and jammed it right up in there, and I'll tell you, she sure looked like she meant business. The poor bastard on the floor thought so, too. Now think hard, Faith - do you _actually think_ she would have blown that guy's nuts off?"

Faith shook her head. "I know I did what I had to do," she said, with a haughty, phony-sounding righteousness that made him want to slap her. "That's it."

"Who are you trying to convince?" he said, and grinned wickedly. He jabbed a finger at her chest. "Because it sounds to me like you're trying to convince _yourself._"

Faith's head rocked back as if he'd physically struck her. "You son of a bitch," she breathed. "You son of a _bitch_, you think I was trying to _murder_ her? You think I just decided to ... to _execute_ her because I didn't like her? Is that it?" She studied him for a moment, then said, very softly, "God, that _is_ what you think. My _God._"

He opened his mouth to say something - he didn't quite know what - but Faith cut him off. "Never mind," she said, her shoulders slumped. "Just forget it. Think whatever you want, I don't care. What's _your _story gonna be?"

"I'll back you up," he said bitterly. "I already said I'd back you up. Cruz was an immediate threat. Cruz raised her weapon and pointed it at you. You used Noble's gun because it was quicker than using your own." He glared at her. "Okay?"

"Close enough. What about Noble?"

"Nothing's changed. He's going down."

Faith nodded wearily. "And what about Cruz?"

"What?"

"Are you gonna turn over on her?"

Ah, now there was a loaded question. If he blew the whistle on Cruz, it would destroy her. He thought he might be able to live with that. It also might destroy _him_. That, needless to say, was a bit tougher to live with. But worst of all, it would mean that every case Cruz had ever gotten a conviction on - cases she'd worked on with him and God only knew how many before - would be brought into question. Gangbangers and drug dealers and various assorted jagoffs who didn't have the right to breathe the same _air_ as everyone else could - _would_ - be let loose.

That might be too much to live with.

_But how many are really guilty? How many are Stevies?_

He forced himself to think of Stevie Nunez, of how Cruz had thought nothing - _nothing!_ - of framing the poor little bastard for murder ... and he'd be a fool to think that Nunez was in any way unique. He thought of Noble's notebook, of some of the things he'd seen in there. Some of the things she'd done. Two-Bags Cruz, blackmailing the dealers by using their own drugs against them, cutting corners wherever she saw fit. Making things up as she went along, things like evidence, confessions, dying declarations, _rules_, whatever. And it was not so much _what_ she did that shocked him, but the recklessness of it. She was always just one small step ahead of the truth, layering lie upon lie upon lie.

And lies, as Bosco well knew, bred lies. Cruz had spent _years_ tempting fate, almost daring it all to fall apart on her.

Tonight it finally had.

"I'm gonna tell them everything," he said at last, the words heavy and acrid in his mouth. "I'm gonna tell them about what she's been doing. Everything. All of it." Faith was looking at him now, and at last there was something approximating surprise on her face. "Yeah, I know what it means, Faith. My ass will be hanging out in the wind right along with hers. It's only right. It's gotta be over, it's gotta _end._ Right now."

Faith sighed again and looked contemplatively into the mirror above the sink.

"So, what?" she said after a moment, addressing her reflection. "So, I'm supposed to be all impressed now? Impressed at how the little boy finally grew up and decided to take responsibility?"

Bosco threw his hands up angrily. "Oh, fuck it. I don't know what you want me to do, Yokas. Crawl around on my goddam knees, maybe."

Faith only shrugged, indifferent. "Do you know how she's doing?"

"That's where I've been for the last half hour. Trying to find out how bad she is. That's been my big excuse. 'Can't talk now, gotta see how 'Ritza's doin'.'"

"And?"

He shrugged. "Her shoulder's a mess. Pulverized, by the sound of it. Noble's gun was loaded with dumdums." He paused, eyeing her. Then, on impulse, he added: "I heard ... well, I guess at first they thought she might lose the arm. That they might have to amputate."

Faith flinched, something Bosco found rather satisfying. He'd actually heard no such thing. But let her squirm, right? Let her squirm.

Then something came back on him unbidden, as if to punish him for taking pleasure in Faith's guilt and discomfort: the memory of Cruz being hustled away by the paramedics, swimming upstream towards consciousness, muttering and hissing and thrashing, trying to tear off the oxygen mask they'd put on her. And there had been one moment when she'd gotten the mask off and clearly - _very_ clearly - screamed her dead sister's name in a cracked, agonized voice, a kind of primal howl that had been utterly unlike anything he would have ever expected to hear out of Cruz, something that had made him want to curl up in a corner of the hotel room and put his hands over his head.

Her sister. Letitia Cruz, who had been an almost perfect parallel of his own drug addict brother Michael. Letitia Cruz, who as far as Bosco knew had been Maritza Cruz's last living relative, now dead of a lethal methamphetamine overdose.

That had been a big part of what had held him to her, hadn't it? Not the only part, not the _main_ part (there was none), but a _big_ part of it. In a shameful, selfish way he'd been almost ecstatic when he learned that they shared that common experience - a sibling who was a self-destructive failure, a constant ball-and-chain around the ankle and a constant weight on the mind. On the _heart_. And when Lettie died, he had been there for her. Oh, you _bet_ he had. If you wanted to be really crude about it, you could say that he and Cruz had ended up in bed together over Lettie's dead body, and the sex had only deepened what he had falsely assumed was a _bond_ between them. A bond that would only add to the sense of righteousness he always felt when he was with her, that sense of righteousness he'd never gotten when he was with Faith. Cruz had wanted justice for her sister, she'd wanted _revenge_, and he'd wanted to help her get it.

But he'd wanted to do it _right_, and even after having known Cruz for eight months he had been stupid enough to believe that she would actually impose limits on herself, on how far she was willing to go.

He should have put an end to this a long time ago, should have wised up to what Cruz really was. He was still disgusted by what Faith had done, it never should have gone to such an extreme ... but when you came right down to it, it never should have been _allowed_ to get to such an extreme, should it? He could have put an end to it, and yet he had chosen not to. For all the usual Boscorelli reasons, of course; righteous pride, bull-headed stubbornness, misplaced loyalty, and - _of course_ - sex.

Faith put a hand to her stomach and groaned softly. "I'm pretty sure I'm gonna throw up, Bosco. I don't want you here when I do. Get out. For the last time, just get out."

He thought of perhaps a dozen more things he could say, dismissed them all almost immediately, and started for the door. Conversation over. They'd gotten their shit together, and now they were finished here.

In more ways than one, they were finished here.


	4. Chapter 3: Cruz

Chapter 3

_Cruz_

I.

She could hear them. Even through the fog of pain and almost berserk rage, she could hear them, jabbering away in their secret language in that dry, impersonal way paramedics have. Familiar and yet meaningless, frantic and yet strangely businesslike, a drone with no words behind it. She'd heard it before, many times.

Only this time, of course, they were talking about _her_. And that was simply _not possible_. It was a dream, had to be, and yet she knew it wasn't, it was _fact_, unchangeable, irreversible, it was done and she had been _cheated, _cheated out of _everything_, out of -

"- have a thirty-year-old female - "

_- the bitch, that Yokas-bitch, that bitch SHOT me - !_

" - G.S.W. to the left shoulder with - "

_- kill her! Kill her! Kill them both, her and that fucking _cabron_ Boscorelli - !_

" - an exit wound, just above the -"

_- cheated me, robbed me of it, I was so close, so close ... Lettie ... _Lettie_ - !_

" - patient is combative - "

It felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to her shoulder, setting off a grenade, grinding in broken glass, you pick the metaphor, but oh _Dios Mio,_ it fucking _hurt ...!_

Then nothing. Blessed relief. Sedation. Sleep.

Sleep.

_Dreamless_ sleep, thank God.

* * *

II.

Two days later, Maritza Cruz lay awake in her hospital bed.

She stared blankly and almost unblinkingly at the ceiling, the only sign of life the gentle rise and fall of her chest ... and her good hand, which clenched and unclenched with slow regularity at her side. This was how she had spent most of her waking moments, and the doctors didn't like it. Zoned out and uncommunicative, eyes fixed on the same ceiling tile (the cracked one, always the cracked one), the right hand opening and closing, opening and closing. Opening and _squeezing_; by now her nails had dug bloody crescents into her palm.

The doctors didn't like _that_, either.

In fact, to be perfectly frank, the doctors didn't like _her_. She had been far from an easy patient to this point; when she wasn't doped up and sleeping she was either lost in her own head or fighting with the nursing staff. She had made two of them cry on the first day alone, and Cruz suspected that they were now drawing straws to decide who would have to deal with the bitch in Room 301. At one point they had sent in their resident she-bear, a big, hefty take-no-shit mama with an ass roughly half the width of a VW microbus. Her name was Yolanda something-or-other. Cruz guessed that they thought sending in a Latina sister to talk Spanish to her would make her more tame. Big Hefty Yolanda had been all ready to put Cruz right about who was in charge.

Cruz had sent her out in tears, raising her score to three.

She had had no patience with these people from the start, but after Yolanda went out bawling she had discovered that she would have to be more careful. She had overheard some ominous talk. Talk of sending in _another_ kind of doctor to see her.

"Just somebody for her to ... _open up_ to," was their uneasy way of putting it.

A shrink, in other words.

Cruz didn't think that being rude and uncooperative was in itself enough to justify sending in a psychologist. She guessed that a good chunk of the doctors' concern came from what had happened in the hotel. They couldn't know the details, but they knew that she was a cop and that she had been shot by _another_ cop, and they probably drew their own conclusions about her state of mind from that. But the fact that she was a handful didn't help matters. So she had to be careful. When they saw what she'd done to her palm, a nurse (not Yolanda, haha) had come in, taken her hand, and clipped her fingernails almost down to the cuticle. Cruz had submitted to this unspeakable humiliation, barely able to restrain the urge to grab the nurse by the collar and smash her head against the metal bedpost.

She was being careful now, though. She was being very careful. But it wasn't easy.

This morning a wizened little doctor named Hyde had come in to see her. _Hyde, _as in _Jekyll and_. That was his little joke, and wasn't it just _so_ cute? Dr. Hyde was an orthopedic surgeon. When he came in he was holding something small and off-white in his hand, something that Cruz at first thought was a dog's plastic chew-toy. Closer inspection had revealed it to be what she would be lifting her arm with for the rest of her life. Because her shoulder was ... well, her shoulder _wasn't_. Her shoulder was, as they say, history. But hey! How does plastic and titanium sound? Screws. Surgical pins. Total replacement with an artificial ball-and-socket joint, which Dr. Hyde had brought in to show her. A marvel of modern medicine for sure, but even so the new shoulder would never be the same as the old one. The one the Good Lord had given her twenty-nine years ago, the one Faith Yokas had blown to powder two days ago.

But it was better than nothing, right?

Physiotherapy would follow. She could see it clearly; months of some grinning nitwit slobbering encouragement at her while sweat streamed down her face from the simple effort of moving her arm. _You can do it, 'Ritza!_ _Just a bit higher, 'Ritza!_ _Just one more lift, 'Ritza!_

Hyde had demonstrated the artificial shoulder's range of motion, showing her how well it worked, telling her how wonderful it would be once they cut her open and screwed it into her body. His eyes had sparkled with childlike enthusiasm, and he had grinned incessantly.

Cruz remembered wanting to kill him.

Instead, she had calmly suggested that Dr. Hyde take his shoulder joint and perform an unnatural act on himself with it. To hell with being a good little girl. Hyde hadn't taken offense anyway. He had simply sighed, shrugged, and left her alone. He would probably be back.

The police had been to see her, as well. She didn't quite remember when - her perception of time had become murky and peculiar - but it was before Dr. Hyde. It had been Lieutenant Swersky and the PBA representative, flanked by two Internal Affairs detectives. She remembered hearing a doctor complaining about it, insisting that they shouldn't be bothering her, but of course they had stayed anyway, all four of them looking down at her with identical sneers, the way you might look at some half-eviscerated lab animal pinned open on a table. They'd waited until they were sure she was awake and clearheaded, and then asked her just what in the name of _hell_ had gone down in that hotel room.

Cruz might have been afraid of them. Perhaps she _should_ have been afraid of them, but she hadn't been. Not in the _slightest_. She'd told them _exactly_ what happened - that Yokas had wigged out and shot her.

The lead IAB detective was Brent Schaeffer. He was a massive, imposing man with steel-gray hair and a goatee that did nothing to soften a heavily-featured, vaguely simian face. He'd asked most of the questions. And she didn't think he had been very impressed with most of her answers.

That was okay - Cruz hadn't been all that impressed with him, either.

He had started with the obvious: "Why were you all there in Aaron Noble's room in the first place? You and Officers Yokas and Boscorelli?"

"Because Yokas was going to blow the case I was working on."

"What do you mean? Why would she do that?"

"How the hell should I know? Yokas has had it in for me since we met. Doesn't like my style."

"What _is_ your style, Sergeant?"

"See, Yokas thinks my whole Anti-Crime team is corrupt - "

"Is it?"

"No! What kind of question is that? She was interfering with my case and with my C.I., and when I went to stop her, she shot me. Simple as that."

"If Officer Yokas is concerned about corruption, that seems like an odd thing for her to do, doesn't it?"

"Don't ask me how she thinks. I told you - I have no idea what her reasoning is."

"Uh-huh. What about the gun, Sergeant? The one Officer Yokas shot you with? It was Aaron Noble's?"

Oh, now _this_ had been a tricky one. Cruz had taken a huge gamble here.

"No ... Yokas planted it - that was why she was there. That was why Boscorelli lured Noble out of his hotel room. They were trying to make it look like Noble was the shooter in the Willie G. killing."

"And not Stevie Nunez."

"That's right. Yokas was planting the gun to frame Noble."

Here Schaeffer had paused, watching her shrewdly. Finally he had said: "Sergeant, you _do_ realize that the paramedics found narcotics on you, right?"

Ah, now came the rapid changes of subject, trying to throw her off her guard. Tricky guy, for sure. But Cruz hadn't missed a beat. "Yeah, so what? I caught some 'banger with it earlier in the day. I let him go but I kept the drugs. It was a judgement call. I'd have turned them in later on."

"I'm sure you would have, Sergeant. Who was this gangbanger you were so uncharacteristically lenient with?"

"Bernie Stiller," she had lied without hesitation. Bernie was an exceptionally high-strung junkie who was a compulsive liar and almost impossible to talk to - if the IAB detectives tracked him down, they'd never get a straight answer out of him. They'd ask him if Cruz had shaken him down - Bernie would say no. But a minute later he might say yes, come to think of it, she _had_ shaken him down. Then he'd flip-flop again. In short, he'd run them around in circles until they tired of him and gave up.

So she was safe. Bases covered.

_Hopefully._

The detectives had asked her a few more questions before they left, questions that were more or less just the same things over again. Trying to trip her up, catch her in a lie, knowing her brains were still a bit mushy from the pain meds. But Cruz had stuck to her story, hoping Noble would be smart enough to stick to his. At the very least, he would deny ownership of the gun, so she had one other person to back her up on that. Noble would have wiped his prints from it - Yokas' prints, however, would be all over it. That was very good.

And yet it all felt too flimsy. Too uncertain. The IAB detectives had _despised_ her, she had felt it clearly. Especially Schaeffer. She knew they would be biased against her the whole way. Righteous bastards, all of them. She'd had her run-ins with them before, and they knew her, they knew her reputation, they knew the rumors surrounding Anti-Crime as well as anyone else. Yokas, on the other hand, had kept her nose relatively clean for years.

_Then again, so have I. They have nothing real on me, they never could get anything real on me, and they _can't_ get anything real on me. Not from the skells on the street - they won't talk if they know what's good for them. Not from Yokas. Not even from Noble's notebook. _

Ah, but what about Boscorelli? What would _his_ story be?

She had absolutely no idea. Boscorelli was a complete mystery to her now. The back-stabbing son of a bitch had turned on her, but that wasn't even the worst of it. He'd turned on her over that pathetic piece of shit Stevie Nunez, but that wasn't the worst of it either. The worst of it was, he'd turned on her just when they had been _so close_. So close to having Richard Buford by the balls. Noble could have handed Buford to them on a silver platter, but Boscorelli (and his bitch partner) hadn't been able to see anything beyond that scrawny little motherfucking junkie.

In a way it was funny, because using Aaron Noble as an informant had started out as something of an amusing game. Noble had built his own career by destroying other people's - his books were supposed to be examples of valiant investigative journalism, shining a light on dirty cops and "corrupt practices." Forcing police departments to step in and take action to appease a liberal public who didn't understand the subtle realities of the job. The truth, however, was actually much sloppier (and, ironically, much less _noble_); in his books, Noble generally pointed fingers in every direction and voiced doubts - often unfounded - about cops who had done nothing wrong. These unfortunates would eventually be cleared, but by then the damage was already done; the pen is, after all, mightier than the sword. Like most cops Cruz hated him, and making him her bitch - so to speak - was an indescribably satisfying pleasure.

But Noble's newest project was going to be a book about the Disciples biker gang and its rivals, and one of the chapters was to focus entirely on Richard Buford, the gang's leader and head of one of the largest heroin and methamphetamine rings in North America. Buford occupied a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list; it was not unusual to see his name mentioned in the same sentence with Osama bin Laden, and he was just as much of a spook. Perhaps even _more_ of a spook - while bin Laden's face was plastered all over every newspaper and TV channel, no-one seemed to even know what Buford looked like.

No-one, that was, but Aaron Noble, who had met the man once and had been planning on meeting him again.

Nailing Buford - and with no help from the feds - would have been an incredible achievement. It would have been national news. She and Bosco would have been up to their necks in medals and commendations. It would have made their careers and perhaps made them minor celebrities. And absolutely none of that would have mattered to Maritza Cruz; she wanted Buford for one reason and one reason only.

He had killed her sister, and he had to pay.

Growing up, she had repeatedly promised her father that she would always be there to protect Lettie, to keep her out of trouble, to keep her from getting hurt. It could be said that such a promise is not uncommon in older brothers and sisters, but from a young age Lettie had given both Maritza and their father plenty of reasons to worry. Lettie had been as stubborn and headstrong as her older sister, but lacked her sense and, more significantly, her _resilience_; being tough was written into Maritza's genes, but seemed to have bypassed Letitia entirely. She was too trusting, too innocent, too ready to believe the best in everyone, and coming up in a tough neighborhood had never squeezed that out of her. Maritza would always have to be there to look out for her ... but never, her father insisted, to _coddle_ her. Maritza would teach Lettie how to defend herself. How to be careful with her trust, how to know when somebody was trying to fuck her over (or just plain trying to fuck her). How to be _tough_.

And Maritza _was_ there through Lettie's childhood, true to her word, almost ten years older and as ruthlessly protective as a mother. Their own mother had died not long after Lettie was born, and there were no other siblings to shoulder any of the burden; the stereotype of the huge Latin-American family most certainly did not apply to them. Maritza mirrored their father's parenting style, a simple, old fashioned stern-but-kind approach, and whatever other problems they might have had, the early years had been the best years; during Lettie's early childhood the most serious problems Maritza faced usually amounted to putting band-aids on scrapes and reading to her at night and scaring away the monsters in her closet. Kid's stuff, literally.

But Maritza also had her legendary temper, and when it came to her sister it was _always_ on a hair trigger. Lettie had been pudgy and gopher-cheeked until she was about ten, and once she was out in the world there was never a shortage of tormentors, the jeering boys and the vicious little girls ... but in the end they always met Maritza, and in the end Maritza always made them sorry. Bullies were dealt with mercilessly, and it didn't matter if the bully in question was only half Maritza's age and size - or _twice_ her size, for that matter. The smallest schoolyard insult required an immediate apology, on pain of immediate face-to-pavement therapy. This knee-jerk philosophy had gone on to land Maritza in more than a few fights, often with girls but also with boys as well, a few of them full-on fist-fights that resulted bloody noses, black eyes and once even a lost tooth.

She remembered them all fondly, too, the wins _and_ the losses. The wins were gratifying. The losses were badges of honor, proud battle-scars taken in the name of family. But the one she remembered the most fondly was a win, and it had happened in the summer of 1987, when she was only fourteen. June 16th. A Tuesday. She'd never forgotten it. She'd never forgotten it for two reasons: one, it was the first time she'd actually beaten someone up over her sister; and two, the person she had beaten up had been her own boyfriend.

He was a white kid named Cameron Wilcox, two years older than her and one of the school's resident heartthrobs. He was also a bit of a blowhard, one of those loud, slightly phony save-the-world liberal types - he claimed to love both Maritza and her culture equally, being deeply interested in learning all about "the Latin-American Experience." In truth, Cam actually knew nothing of her culture and could not even string two words of Spanish together; even at fourteen Maritza could see that his interest in the "experience" began and ended with getting into her pants.

She didn't care. She was tough and she was a natural-born cynic and she could see Cam for the pretentious, essentially harmless, essentially _horny_ kid he was. She was, however, also a horny kid herself, and she liked Cam more or less for one reason; he was cute. She might even go the distance and say he was _hot_. He was hot, and she knew he wanted her, and she was already learning to use that to her advantage to manipulate him. She didn't lose her virginity to him, but in a sense she did lose her innocence; it was the first time in her life Maritza Cruz had the clear sense that her body could really be used as a tool of domination ... and perhaps even as a weapon. She tested this theory on Cam constantly, with an almost clinical fascination and growing sense of excitement that made her think of a fledgling superhero toying with her newfound powers. She could make Cam do anything. _Anything_. And the beauty of it was, she didn't even have to degrade herself in any way, didn't have to lift so much as a finger - just throw out a sly hint here, a vague suggestion there, a flash of thigh or cleavage or even just a slinky look, and Cam Wilcox became her willing servant.

June 16th, 1987 was supposed to have been a little different. Her friend Sarena had gone away with her parents; before departing, Sarena had slipped a key into Maritza's hand, punctuating it with a wink. It was a key to Sarena's apartment. Sarena's _empty_ apartment. So Maritza had decided that the day had finally come to indulge in some good ol' fashioned teenage experimentation. She and Cam were going to get off the bus at her usual stop, walk right past her own building, head straight to Sarena's, and see if they couldn't suck the fillings out of each other's teeth. And maybe do a little more. A _little_ more. She was wearing her green halter, and she was idly debating with herself whether or not she would let Cam get a hand into it. She had, however, decided that she _was_ going to let him think he could go as far as he wanted with her. Then she would stop him just when he was at his most hot and bothered.

It was going to be great.

They never got to Sarena's, of course; just as they were passing her own building, the front doors flew open with a hollow bang. Maritza and Cam both jumped and swung around guiltily, and for one awful moment Maritza could actually see her father come charging out and down the concrete steps, supernaturally aware of what she was up to and ready to put her in traction for about eight weeks for planning to do such an irresponsible and dangerous thing.

But it wasn't her father who came out. Lettie, who at a proud five years old was already off school for the summer, came sweeping down the steps full-tilt, face split in a broad grin. She must have been lying in ambush in the apartment, watching out the window, just waiting for her sister to get home.

"Maritza!" she was screeching. "Maritza! Come see! Come see! Papa bought me fish! Come see!"

Maritza, taken by surprise and not even sure what it was Lettie was yelling about (_fish? Like, for dinner?_), started to tell her no, not now, she was busy, even as Lettie caught hold of her hand and started tugging her back toward the front steps of their building. Maritza dug in her heels but Lettie took absolutely no notice, pulling with that deadly serious, industrious determination small children get when trying to make a big person hustle it up.

Cam Wilcox didn't normally mind Lettie. In truth, he seemed a bit uncomfortable around kids in general and didn't pay much attention to her. When he did speak to her, he was always nice in a stilted, offhand kind of way, talking to her in a few token monosyllables and then dismissing her.

Now, however, Lettie's behavior was affecting him in a very direct and very drastic way. Lettie was making his girlfriend hesitate. And blood was thicker than water; if Lettie wanted Maritza to abandon him for some other nonsense, Maritza probably would.

And there was her father to worry about.

"Uh, 'Ritza ...?" Cam rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "We should get moving."

"Yeah," she said absently over her shoulder. Lettie was still pulling. She was making game little grunting sounds now, too - _uh! uh! uh!_ "Look, Cam, just a - " Maritza broke off as Lettie, tired of trying to tow her sister along by force, abruptly let go of her hand and ran on ahead.

Maritza, still offering a gentle but firm resistance when Lettie released her, stumbled backwards. One of her sandals slid off and she almost fell on her ass. "I can't right now, Lettie," Maritza called after her in Spanish, dancing on one foot as she fumbled the sandal back on. "Later, okay?"

Lettie turned. Her smile hadn't faded, not in the slightest, and she was hopping from foot to foot like she had to go to the bathroom. "You've gotta come see them! Papa bought them for me today!" She glanced at Cam, who she clearly thought should be interested as well. "Come in and see!"

It was at this point that Cam, clearly sensing his chances at getting up to some mischief (and maybe getting a hand under that green halter) running out from under him, took a step towards Lettie. He bent over and rested his hands on his thighs, the way any condescending adult will usually talk to a kid, even though Lettie was at the top of the steps and therefore already at eye-level with him.

He smiled at her and said: "Get lost. We don't care about your stinkin' fish."

He said it softly, and he might have even tried to lighten the words a bit, make it sound like it was all in fun. But Lettie wasn't stupid; she sensed the subtle undertone, and she knew Cam well enough now to associate his coolness towards her with dislike.

But Maritza would think later that what _really_ crushed Lettie was the idea that Cam was actually speaking for both himself and for Maritza - _we don't care about your stinkin' fish._ That word must have clanged through the kid's brain like a gong - _WE_. Cam's opinion alone wouldn't have mattered, but the idea that Maritza (_her Maritza!_) could also be indifferent was obviously too much.

Lettie's smile disappeared, and for a moment it looked like that might be the end of it, that Lettie would just go back inside and sulk, but then her face twitched and then it cracked and then it crumbled and she began to cry.

Maritza turned to Cam, feeling a warm, brassy anger rising in her cheeks. Cam looked mildly uncomfortable and a bit surprised, but only in the most offhand way - he was more or less ready to get back to business. Lettie stood on the steps, her fish forgotten, her head tilted back slightly, bawling at the sky.

Thoughts of making out with Cam, of teasing him into a hormonal feeding frenzy just for kicks, disappeared. All physical attraction immediately ceased. The anger began to boil over into a dark rage that was already becoming familiar to her, and Maritza took a step towards him.

Cam shrugged and offered a sheepish smile, as if to say, _little brothers, little sisters, little pains in the ass - whaddaya gonna do_? Because _he_ thought it was over. He really did. He thought she was ready to get on with it, that she was just going to walk away with him and leave Lettie bawling on the front steps of their building. He thought he could hurt her sister's feelings and ruin her excitement at whatever she was so keyed up about, and nothing would come of it.

"I'm sorr-" Cam began, smiling his bashful _I'm-a-bad-wittle-boy_ smile, and he was still smiling when Maritza punched him in the face.

It must be understood that this was not a _slap_, not an indignant little cuff to the nose that might or might not draw blood; this was a serious right cross, with all of her weight and lean strength thrown behind it. It caught him square and true right across the cheek and took him off his feet.

Everything seemed to go very quiet in the ten or so seconds that followed; Maritza could hear herself panting (with fury, not exertion - Cam went down like the sack of shit he was), but she could no longer hear Lettie crying. She couldn't hear any music, either, and that was odd because there was _always_ music around here, drifting out of somebody's window or some kid's ghetto-blaster somewhere on the block. It was just another constant of the summer ... but now there was nothing. She had the sudden and stupidly giddy feeling of having stopped the world. She and Cam and Lettie were the three principal actors on a stage and everyone on Earth was just waiting now to see what would happen next.

What happened next was this: her hand began to throb.

She looked down at it blandly. The knuckles were red and already beginning to swell. She had hurt herself. On Cam's face. She had _hurt_ herself.

She dismissed this and looked dreamily over at Lettie.

The little girl was staring at her, her tears forgotten, her face slack, her mouth set in a perfectly comical O of surprise.

Cam, for his part, sat on the ground for what seemed a very long time, stunned. He didn't look to be very badly hurt, and when it came right down to it he wasn't (she had hurt her hand almost as much as she'd hurt him - maybe more), but the next time Maritza saw him he was sporting one very ugly shiner.

Eventually, Cam began to stand up.

Two things happened when he did.

Firstly, he began to cry. More accurately, he began to _bawl_, and that was important to Maritza in a symbolic sense; through the magic of a well-placed punch, she had transferred her sister's tears over to him.

Secondly, once he was up on his feet he immediately began rattling off a series of poisonous racial slurs, some of which she'd heard before and many that she hadn't, all of them appalling and gutter-filthy and usually with some sexual subtext behind them, all pouring out of this politically correct, sweetly stupid liberal kid who thought he was so hip to the "Latin-American Experience."

When he was finished, his nose was running and his lip was bleeding and his face was screwed into a childish leer. Maritza's expression of dull surprise now mirrored Lettie's. She wondered how she could have _ever_ let him touch her. Or kiss her. _Jesus._

Maritza moved in close and said, very softly, in the same mock-kind tone he'd used with Lettie: "I'd get out of here, if I were you." Then she spat directly and almost daintily into his face and added, just as sweetly: "_Cabron._"

Cam looked around. People all over the neighborhood had heard him, of course, people all over this _predominately Hispanic_ neighborhood had heard him screaming a string of racist gutter-talk that would have made the staunchest KKK stooge blush, and many had come out on the street to see what it was all about.

If Cam didn't vacate the area within the next two minutes, a punch in the face from a teenage girl was going to be the least of his troubles.

Cam did manage to get away with his head on straight - that much Maritza remembered, but she no longer knew the details of how, because in those first few minutes after the punch she had gone into a mild kind of shock. Not at what she'd done; if she could do it over again, she'd do it the same, right down to the last second - just for that satisfying _thock_ she'd felt all the way up her arm. What shocked her was how sickeningly fast things could change, how quickly and easily the entire balance of a situation could swing to the other end of the spectrum. It was a feeling she'd become intimately reacquainted with two days ago in that hotel room.

She did remember spending the remainder of the afternoon sitting in her father's armchair, holding her swollen and aching hand in a bucket of ice while he yelled at her. Jaime Cruz loved both his daughters dearly but he was hopelessly unable to understand the older one, and the poor man had no idea that this incident was just the first in an escalating trend. Why couldn't she control her temper? Why did she do such things? Was it any way for a good Catholic girl to behave, picking fistfights with boys right out on the street? This kid was going to make trouble for them, Papa said morosely. A white boy getting his block knocked off by a Latino girl - trouble, oh _trouble_. Papa would call Father Estrada in the morning and she would speak with him, she would go to Confession, she would learn to count to ten before she started throwing jabs and uppercuts and haymakers, something, _anything_.

Maritza had taken it all very patiently, relieved that Papa didn't know what the _original_ plan for the day had been. The "fish" Lettie had been so excited about had turned out to be two perfectly ordinary, perfectly uninteresting goldfish their father had bought for her that day. Once her hand was a bit better, Maritza had gone into Lettie's room to make a show of _oohing_ and _aahing_ over them. Cam never did make any trouble - probably because he remembered that string of disgusting epithets he'd screamed at her afterwards - but Maritza wouldn't have cared if he had. Cam was gone to her. Cam was history, easily discarded and never missed. Cam was _moot_. Cam didn't compare to Lettie, sitting there watching her new fish swim around, enthralled, utterly content, not knowing that someday she would die in the basement of a filthy methamphetamine lab while it burned down around her.

Lettie was all that mattered to her in the end - protecting her, keeping her safe, and it that meant the occasional fistfight, so be it. But it could never stay so simple, so satisfying, so innocent; by the time Lettie hit her teens, keeping that promise to her father had become a serious, exhausting, and terribly _frustrating_ business for Maritza. At fourteen Lettie wasn't sneaking off to make out with boyfriends; she was hanging out with honest-to-god dope dealers, _the real thing_, drug dealers and drug addicts and gangbangers, the sort of crowd who couldn't exactly be intimidated by blustery threats made by an indignant older sister. If Maritza had tried to take the Cam Wilcox approach, there was a good chance she'd have gotten a knife slid between her ribs. Lettie got older and Lettie got surly and arrogant and Lettie started getting into some bad trouble, and Maritza could no longer do anything about it.

The answer was simple and obvious: she became a cop, and protecting Lettie truly and literally became a full-time job.

But in the end none of it had mattered, had it? Not one bit. Lettie had died, and afterwards something had soured for Maritza, her outlook on her job had changed. She didn't lose her passion for it - if anything it was the very opposite. She became even more deeply immersed, setting the job up as a barrier between herself and the world. But suddenly there was no real pleasure in taking down the low-level dealers, no satisfaction in dismantling their operations, no satisfaction even in the thought of how many hypothetical kids she could save by doing so. She did her job with the same fierce conviction she'd always had ... but with a note of sour desperation as well. It started to become clear to her that things would have to be taken to the next level if Lettie was ever going to be at peace, if she was ever going to make up for failing her so completely. A single individual would have to be separated from the herd, somebody high up on the food chain, somebody who profited from this kind of obscenity more than anyone else. One person would have to be singled out and made to pay.

She had decided that person would be Richard Buford.

For a while the thought had allowed her to rest easy, easier than she had in _months_ - there had been no insomnia, no nightmares, no waking up in the middle of the night sick and shivering and drowning in her own sweat. No dreams about Lettie, no dreams about that last night in the hospital, the last overdose, no dreams of the meth lab, the fire, Lettie dead in her arms. That it could really end that way, that all those years could come right down to that one pitiful moment, the air hot and stinking and full of burning chemicals, the house falling down around them. Lettie dead in her arms. After all those years.

She had crafted a plan, working out exactly how she would handle the operation, how she would deal with Buford when she caught him (and it _would_ be her who caught him, you could lay your money down on _that_), planning in exquisite detail how she would tear it out of his hide. If things played out just right, she might even be able to get him alone. A bullet in each kneecap, perhaps. Followed by one in the groin. And then she would spit on him. All purely in self-defense, of course, and to hell with any inquiries or reviews boards that might follow. And even if she simply took him down routine and legal, it would be enough.

It was all gone now, though. All _academic_, you might say. Buford was out of her reach, Buford had been spooked and had pulled a quick fade. And she _had been so close_.

Now she had other problems. Now she was almost as helpless as a baby, stuck in this goddam bed, at the mercy of the hospital staff and, more so, the _painkillers_. Every time they doped her up, she told herself that she would let the drugs wear off and refuse more, that she would just suck it up and deal with the pain. And every time it became unbearable, every time she would end up calling for the nurse, almost in tears from the agony, the humiliation, the black fucking _rage_. Soon they would want to start a surgery schedule, begin the process of rebuilding her mangled shoulder, and that would make things even worse. They kept telling her that her injury was of the career-ending variety, that while she might keep working for the NYPD in some capacity, her days in the field were most certainly over.

Cruz had no intention of riding a desk for the rest of her life. Just as she had no intention of staying here in this place any longer than she had to. She needed to get up, get up and get back out to where she would be in some kind of _control_. She told herself over and over that she had not lost everything, that something could still be salvaged. But even if that were true, she was still _losing_ every minute she lay here.

And it was all because of Yokas. And _Boscorelli_. The back-stabbing son of a bitch _cabron_.

Her train of thought was broken by needling pain in her good hand.

She held it up and squinted at it. Her nails were too short now to do any further damage to her palm, but her fist had clenched so tight that the old cuts had pulled open, the little square band-aids the nurse had put on now mashed around and gummy with sweat.

She wiped the blood absently on her sheets and sighed. The shoulder was getting worse, too. It had been for the last hour or so, ramping slowly but surely from a dull, distant throb to a persistent ache. She was becoming accustomed to the cycle, and she knew that very soon it would become excruciating. She didn't think she would be able to take it, and there it was again, staring her in the face - as long as she was dependant on the dope, nothing would change. She would remain helpless. The terrible irony of this was not lost on her. For all intents and purposes, she had become a junkie.

Oh, how it all comes around.

Gritting her teeth, she pressed the Call button.

Later, as she drifted off to sleep, Cruz's thoughts finally mellowed. She would be all right. This mess was just one of dozens she'd gotten herself into - and out of - over the eight years of her career. She'd been through a lot worse and come out clean on the other side. It would be Yokas's word against hers, but she would have Noble to back her up, and to hell with Boscorelli - with his reputation nobody was apt to believe _anything_ he said. It would be Yokas and Boscorelli who would find their asses over the fire by the time she was finished with them. Oh yes. Don't doubt it for a second. And then she could get back to business. Back to finding Buford.

She would be all right. She always was.

Everything would be all right.

* * *

III.

"Cruz."

_No ... lemme 'lone. _

"Wake up, Sergeant."

She groaned softly, the sleep - God, that sweet, warm, _dreamless_ sleep - thinning, slipping away. It was followed immediately by a flare of sullen irritation. Bastard! Who was it? The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it. Whoever it was, they should be thankful she wasn't exactly feeling one hundred percent. If she _were_ feeling one hundred percent, she'd get up and hand them their ass.

"Wakey wakey, Sarge."

She _did_ know that voice. She could open her eyes and find out who it was, but she wanted - _needed_ - to sleep, so badly. Oh, it was so _incredible_ to sleep this way, so serene, so warm ...

Her eyes closed again.

"You really can't do this later?" someone else said. Sounded like maybe one of the doctors. Fields? Fields, yes, she thought so.

"No." A pause, and then the voice was directed at her again, harsher now. "Wake up and greet the world, beautiful."

_God-DAMMIT!_

Cruz at last managed to open her eyes, squinting against the stark white hospital lighting. Three blurry figures were at the foot of her bed, one of them the doctor. The other two ... the other two were wearing suits, and one of them was huge, well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker. The owner of the deep voice. The voice that was familiar.

The voice that had a _bad_ association with it.

It was Detective Schaeffer. And he was grinning.

"What'cha want?" she slurred, deliberately making herself sound sleepier than she really was, buying a few seconds to get her mind working, to _think_. Her heart was suddenly pounding hard in her chest, too hard, too fast, enough so that it felt like the whole bed was shaking with the force of it. Her shoulder had come awake with her and was now singing with a bright, nauseating pain.

Why was he back here? Why?

Schaeffer leaned in a bit closer. "Don't bullshit me, Cruz," he said softly. Almost _kindly_. "Your bullshitting days are over."

She forced herself to look at him, her apprehension growing, almost overshadowing the pain. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be on fire, and she could no longer tell where the terror ended and the physical pain began. _Your bullshitting days are over_ - what the hell was _that_?

_They're here for me, that's what. It's over. They've got something, Noble talked, Bosco talked, Yokas spun them some wonderful tale. Something._

No. Couldn't be that, it couldn't be what she thought it was, couldn't be -

"Maritza Cruz," Schaeffer said when he was sure he had her full attention. "You are under arrest for obstruction of justice, filing a false police report, possession of an illegal substance for the purposes of trafficking, and assault with a deadly weapon." He grinned. "And those, my dear, are just the appetizers. It's gonna get a lot tastier down the road, I promise you."

_No._

Cruz opened her mouth to speak, and all that came out was a long, whistling sigh.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at the expense of the State." Schaeffer leaned down and smiled sweetly. "Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"

_No. No no no no no no no -_

"I said: do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"

_It's not over, I can get out of this, they can't do this ..._

"Listen to me," she said, hating the quiver that she heard - or thought she heard - in her voice. "Listen, it was Yokas. It was all Yokas, Yokas and Boscorelli. They're in it together." She licked her lips, aware that she was rambling and helpless to stop. "I think they're screwing each other, if you ask me, and they hate me, they hate Anti-Crime, ask Noble, he'll back me up, they -"

"Shut up," Schaeffer said flatly, and she did. "I'd love nothing more than to cart your ass away right now, Cruz, but of course that would be considered _cruel._" He turned to his partner. "Cuff her. Use the right arm. Hook her up to the guardrail, up near the top there, see? Where that little bar is."

The other detective nodded and stepped forward, producing a pair of handcuffs from his jacket.

"Now wait," Dr. Fields said, stepping forward. "That's ridiculous. She can barely move."

Schaeffer grunted. "She sure as hell won't be moving now. Cuff her."

"No!" Fields said sharply.

Schaeffer raised an eyebrow. "She a friend of yours or something?"

Fields shook his head. "Look, she's weak, all right? She's only got the one arm - there's neural damage in the left arm and she can barely move her fingers. She needs her right hand to eat, to - "

"Oh, just go ahead and finish breaking my fragile fucking heart," Schaeffer said bitterly. He turned to his partner. "Okay, cuff the other arm, then."

"No," Fields repeated. "No cuffs."

Schaeffer sighed, looking at Cruz thoughtfully. She glared back at him, resolving not to drop her eyes, not to give him the satisfaction ... but she could not stop herself from trembling. She thought of the way Lettie was that last night in the hospital. Stinking and soaked with sweat and twitching endlessly, shaking, hissing, spitting, reduced to little more than an animal. For Lettie, the end had been near.

As it was for her now.

_No, oh no. It's not over. It's not. I can get out of this, somehow. It's NOT OVER!_

But it was. They would start with Stevie Nunez, and then they would start working their way backwards. They would start _connecting the dots_, if you like. And in the end, they would uncover _everything_, her whole history, and that would be it. She would go to prison, and everything she had ever done as a cop would be _un_done. She would lose everything.

And she would lose whatever slim chance she might have had at resuming the search for Buford.

The detective could see this all going through her mind, and he was plainly enjoying her distress, getting _off_ on it. She could see it.

_Oh, to have a gun right now, even just a little .22, I'd - _

"No cuffs," Schaeffer agreed finally. He chuckled. "What the hell, she looks like the type who'd just chew her own hand off anyway." He turned to Dr. Fields. "But we _are _gonna be posting a guard on her door. That _okay_ with you, Doctor?"

Fields nodded, indifferent. Now that Schaeffer was no longer threatening her physical well-being, he had lost all interest in being Cruz's champion. "Sure. But really, it isn't necessary."

"Listen," Cruz whined -

_(Lettie, Lettie, you're just like Lettie now, and isn't _that_ poetic justice) _

" - listen, _please_ listen, okay? Yokas shot me. She and Boscorelli were planting the gun, and she shot me ... you heard the doctor, I have neural damage, I can't use my arm, I'll be a cripple the rest of my life, I ..." She broke off, marginally aware that she was crying, _begging_, her remaining dignity evaporating as fear gave way to outright panic. She had lost herself, completely and utterly. Maritza Cruz was gone, it seemed; a sniveling little girl was in her place. And still she was almost blind with a hysterical, aimless kind of hatred - for Schaeffer, for Yokas, for Boscorelli, for Yolanda the she-bear nurse, for Dr. Hyde and his shitty artificial shoulder, for Dr. Fields, for Buford, even for Lettie, for Noble, for her father, her mother, for herself, for _everyone_.

"Noble," she whimpered, chest hitching. "Noble will back me up. They were trying to frame him ..."

"Noble told us everything," Schaeffer said, again almost kindly. "He admitted that he killed Willie G., that it wasn't Stevie Nunez at all. It was _you_ who was doing all the framing, Cruz, not Yokas. You and Boscorelli. And you know what's _really_ funny? Noble will probably be able to squirm out of it. It _was_ self-defense, after all, and he only lied about it because you and Boscorelli coerced him to."

Schaeffer actually reached down and patted her shin gently, smiling like a grandfather. "Don't you get it, Cruz? You have nothing left to hide behind. You're screwed."


	5. Chapter 4: Bosco

Author's Quick Little Note: Not to spoil anything for you first-time readers out there, but you'll notice some striking similarities between this chapter and the direction the show has taken in Season Six. The original version of this chapter was posted over a year ago, and back then I had no idea that Internal Affairs even did stuff like ... well, you'll see. If you haven't already guessed, anyway. But if the show's anything to go by, I seemed to have gotten most of it right anyway. And now that I know I wasn't being totally unrealistic, I think the chapter reads with a little more confidence than it did a year ago.

I left Schaeffer's rank as Detective, however, even though I see now that he'd probably be in Captain Finney's position. I didn't bother to go back and insert Finney, either, because Finney's dirty and frankly, I just like my character better. Schaeffer doesn't hate Cruz as much as Finney did - Schaeffer hates her more. >;)

* * *

Chapter 4

_Bosco_

I.

Of the four men sitting across from him, Detective Brent Schaeffer was the one Bosco was the most afraid of. There was Swersky, and there was Patrick Whitney, the PBA representative. No problems there - aside from the fact that Whitney was young and obviously new to the game. Then there was Schaeffer's partner (or lackey - Bosco thought that probably hit closer to the mark), Detective Ian Grady. Grady was the strong silent type, about ten, maybe fifteen years younger than Schaeffer. Though he kept quiet throughout the entire interrogation, Grady smiled whenever Schaeffer spoke. It was almost pitifully obvious that Grady thought the sun shone directly out of Schaeffer's ass, and wanted to be just like him.

And then there was Schaeffer himself.

The simple fact was, he was a beast. He exuded a gleeful, malicious good humor that he made no attempt to conceal, and it was extremely unsettling. In Bosco's experience, IAB detectives were usually dry, dour middle-aged men with absolutely no warmth in them at all, and that was what he was used to dealing with. Not that Schaeffer had any such thing as _warmth_, mind you. His unseemly manner may or may not have been a put-on, just his own way of throwing his subjects -

(_suspects_)

off their guard, but whether it was an act or not Bosco thought he had the guy pegged; Schaeffer was a self-appointed Grand Inquisitor, a man who probably thought of himself as a tragic and unappreciated hero, a man who loved to nail dirty cops (or perhaps just any cop he happened to decide was "dirty") to the wall and didn't mind showing it.

Bosco was ready to take what he had coming (at least, he kept _telling_ himself he was) but he knew he would still have to be extremely careful around this guy.

He had already told them everything. He had done exactly what he'd promised Faith he would do - he'd cut the bag open and let the whole corrupted mess run out onto the floor. _Everything_ - no detail omitted. Everything that he and Cruz had done as partners (including the fact that they'd balled each other silly for almost three months, something which Bosco didn't think was relevant but had blurted out anyway), plus everything he knew about her past exploits for good measure. He didn't actually know _much_ on that score; most of it had come out of what he'd read in Noble's notebook.

The notebook Cruz had thrown back in his face at the bar that night.

The notebook he'd promptly handed over to IAB.

There was a word for what he'd done, of course. A verb. A verb that also just happened to be the descriptive noun for what he had made himself into, and the word was _rat_. He _had_ ratted. He _was_ a rat. See how well they fit, how easily it just rolled off the tongue whatever way you said it? Verb or noun, take your pick. _See Maurice rat. Maurice IS a rat. _

And what would happen when his colleagues found out?

_See Maurice run. Run, Maurice, run._

Grammar lesson over for today, kids.

For his part, though, Bosco didn't much care about other people's opinions - as far as he was concerned they could brand him whatever they wanted. Hell, he'd already systematically alienated most of the Five-Five outside Anti-Crime, and right now he was more or less resigned to the fact that his days in the NYPD were over anyway. But it didn't matter in any case. He had done nothing more than own up to his mistakes. He had accepted _responsibility_. As far as Bosco was concerned, you didn't call that being a rat. You called it being a _man_. Whatever else his father might have been, he had somehow managed to impart that much wisdom to his oldest son;_ a man owns up_. Bosco didn't think Pop himself had ever followed that advice very closely (any more than Ma could have stood behind her_ lies breed lies_ crap - Ma with her bruises and fat lips and her phonebook-length list of implausible excuses) but he was a better man than his father. He was a better man. He'd owned up. And if he took Cruz down with him, so be it.

She wouldn't have hestiated to do the same to him. He knew that now.

None of this was to say it had been _easy_. He'd tried to be professional about it, of course - proud, dignified, sure of himself. And he'd ended up with his eyes downcast, talking into his chest, the way a devout man might if forced to recite something loathesome and profane. Fidgeting the whole time, too, his right knee jittering under the table as his hands wrestled with each other above it. Worrying about whether or not he was doing the right thing even as he was doing it, thinking about his own future, the end of his career, the end of life as he'd always known it. Thinking about all the convictions that might be overturned, the cases that might be reviewed and thrown out. And he'd kept flashing on a melodramatic image of Maritza Cruz being led through a prison cellblock in leg-irons and cuffs, head down, the air hot with jeers and catcalls from all her new friends.

But when the deed was done he'd felt fine. He'd felt _cleansed_. It was, if you'll forgive the crude analogy, like taking a long, heavy and much-needed dump. The rest he could deal with. He was now officially on suspension. So be it. IAB seemed to be taking their sweet time sorting through it all, but once they had their house in order Bosco knew he'd be looking at dismissal and probably criminal charges.

And that was actually what he'd assumed today's little adventure would be about. They'd serve him his walking papers, maybe slap a set of cuffs on his wrists in the bargain. Or maybe they were going to offer him a deal: testify against Cruz and he'd still walk away a civilian ... but he'd be a _free_ civilian.

But this interrogation (_Inquisition_ - with Schaeffer it would be better referred to as an _Inquisition_, capital _I _) wasn't about Cruz or her dirty methods or even about Bosco himself - it was about what happened in Aaron Noble's hotel room. Bosco didn't have much left to say on _that_ matter, either. He'd already given them a minute-by-minute walkthrough of the whole fiasco, up to and including the lie, that one crucial little lie that centered around that one crucial little question: _who acted first_?

Nobody seemed to have any trouble believing that it was Cruz.

But here they were, going over it all again, Bosco stuck in a small, stuffy interview room with Schaeffer, Schaeffer's personal ass-kisser Grady, and Patrick Whitney, the PBA rep who didn't look old enough to shave and didn't even seem to know where he was.

And Lieutenant Swersky.

Throughout the questioning, Bosco found his eyes wandering back to the Lieu again and again, to the only familiar face here, looking for some kind of support ... or even just a hint of what the man might be thinking. But Swersky, normally so protective of his officers (even the ones he didn't much like), was offering nothing. After the shooting he had been absolutely nuclear, screaming himself hoarse at anyone unwise enough to wander under his nose, but at the moment he was completely, uncharacteristically quiet, and somehow that was worse. This whole mess - this whole little_ Inquisition_ - was terrifying, and Bosco had no qualms about admitting it. Swersky was his only anchor, and he had barely spoken two words to him. He didn't even look smug or angry or disgusted; if he had any discernable expression, Bosco would call it a distant, preoccupied kind of worry.

With a touch of fear.

This had something to do with Faith. Bosco was sure of it. They knew. Somehow they'd figured out what really went down in that room.

He didn't know why that should scare him the way it did. Since leaving her alone in the washroom at Mercy he'd barely spared Faith a second thought. He made a few crippled little attempts to explain this away, telling himself that he could afford to put her out of his mind because he knew she was going to be okay, and that he'd do better to worry about himself. The truth, however, was that he had put her out of his mind simply because he was still too deep in shock over what she'd done, and he hadn't even _begun_ to sort out how he felt about her now. Everything he thought he knew about Faith Yokas had been thrust into an entirely new light, and if Schaeffer had somehow put it together that she had shot Cruz in the heat of the moment, Bosco wasn't really sure if it should bother him or not. It was, after all, the truth.

Faith had asked him - rather harshly - if he remembered "truth."

Bosco found he did.

_So what does that mean? _he thought uneasily at himself._ If this hump decides to ask you point-blank if Faith Yokas tried to murder a fellow officer, you'll sit there and nod your head and agree? Turning over on Cruz was one thing - she had it coming. But Faith has a family. She's got Charlie and Emily to look out for. Are you seriously gonna rat _her _out? Are you gonna rat out your partner of nine years?_

Bosco didn't think he would. The idea was absurd, really.

But the truth was, he really didn't know.

"Okay, Boscorelli," Schaeffer said cheerily, yanking him out of his reverie. The detective poured himself a tall glass of water from a pitcher set out on the table between them, making no move to offer one to anyone else. "Let's go over this one last time for posterity, starting from the part where Officer Yokas broke into Noble's room and found the gun. While that was going on, you were at a bar with Noble, and Cruz showed up. Am I doing okay so far?"

Bosco merely offered a cold, barely perceptible nod.

Schaeffer nodded back and continued. "Cruz is one smart little cookie. She figured out what you were up to and went to Noble's hotel room. You followed her. Why?"

"What do you mean _why?_ I was trying to stop her."

"Stop her from doing what?"

"I _told_ you. I was trying to stop Cruz from putting a guy away for something he didn't do."

But of course this wasn't what Schaeffer was asking at all, and Bosco knew it.

_Why are you being so difficult? You've been through this already, and if Schaeffer wants to rub it in a little, let him - after all, you brought all this on yourself. Forget Faith and forget what she did to Cruz - what she _tried_ to do to Cruz - and take your medicine like a man. _

_I_ am _taking my medicine,_ he answered himself sullenly._ I already _have_ taken my medicine. Doesn't mean I have to do anything to make this jagoff's job any easier. _

Schaeffer was glaring at him.

Bosco shrugged helplessly and went on. "Okay. Okay, I was also getting ... I was getting worried. Cruz was going too far. I was afraid she was gonna do something ... something she'd regret later."

"Something she'd _regret_," Schaeffer said dryly. "Such as harm Officer Yokas?"

"Yeah," Bosco said, though that was really only a half-truth - he _had_ chased Cruz out of the bar fearing that she was on her way to harm Faith, but not in the literal sense; he'd been afraid that Cruz would catch her in the act of tossing Noble's room, arrest her, and charge her with breaking and entering - something Cruz would have been within her rights to do. Then she would have made sure Noble's gun remained undiscovered, and Faith would have ended up taking the fall.

As always, Bosco had only been trying to look out for her. Trying to _protect_ her. The way he supposed he was going to have to protect her now.

"Okay," Schaeffer said, nodding. "You follow Cruz. Noble follows you. Everybody ends up facing off." He leaned forward, eyes locked with Bosco's. "This is the part I'm the most interested in, Boscorelli, so as always I'll ask you to think very carefully before you answer. Exactly what did Sergeant Cruz do?"

"She asked Faith for the gun."

"_Asked_ for it? 'Pretty please with sugar on top?'"

"Okay, she _ordered_ Faith to hand it over."

"That was all? Cruz just came in and said, 'give me the gun,' acting in her official capacity as Officer Yokas's superior?"

Bosco sighed inwardly, suddenly deeply tired of all of this, of all these stupid runaround games - Schaeffer's _and_ his own. They'd played them all before and he'd lost his taste for them. "No. Cruz got ... agitated. Started waving her gun around, yelling about how cops need to do whatever it takes, that Anti-Crime's job is to do whatever needs to be done, no questions asked."

"So that's how you'd describe her state of mind? _Agitated_?"

"Yeah. Agitated."

"Unstable, maybe?"

"Yeah, I suppose you could say that."

"She's a very angry woman, isn't she?" Schaeffer said with an odd little smile. "There's a lot of bitterness there. A lot of pent-up rage."

Bosco nodded nervously. "Yeah. A lot."

"And what did she do when Officer Yokas refused to hand over Noble's gun?"

Bosco paused, watching the detective carefully, trying not to look as uneasy as he felt. Behind his fastidious little goatee Schaeffer's face was heavily-jawed and wide-lipped, his watery gray eyes set a bit too close together under a thick, scowling brow. But those eyes were bright and searching and intense, and Bosco wondered just how far into him the man was really able to see. That was the trouble with being a cop - he knew what it was like to be on Schaeffer's side of the desk. He knew _exactly_ what it was like, and it was part of what made Schaeffer so dangerous. An interrogation was cat-and-mouse, teasing your prey, playing with them, trying to trick them into making a mistake. Schaeffer was in charge of turning that whole dynamic on its head, making the interrogator into the interrogated. Schaeffer knew all the tricks. What was worse, he knew that _Bosco_ knew all the tricks, too.

But it wasn't as if he had many options when it came to how he answered the question. The lie was already out and he would have to stick to it. For his own sake as much as for Faith's.

_There you go - you knew you'd never sell her out. So say it. You've already said it, so say it again. The final lie, the magic lie that's supposed to make everything all better. You hope. The final lie. _

_You _hope.

"Cruz saw that Faith wasn't gonna hand over the gun," Bosco said finally. "I saw Cruz ... Cruz raised her gun and pointed it at Faith. Faith didn't have time to clear her own sidearm, so she just flipped Noble's and used it instead."

Schaeffer clucked his tongue. "Risky. Risky to just take an unfamiliar firearm and try to use it, right from the hip like that. She must have really felt Cruz meant business."

"Yeah ..." Bosco said slowly, searching the detective's tone for anything that sounded like suspicion or sarcasm and finding nothing. He _was_ starting to notice something a bit odd, though: Schaeffer referred to Faith as _Officer Yokas_ ... but rarely used Cruz's proper rank. "Yeah, well, I guess she just prayed it was loaded and ready to fire."

Schaeffer laughed sourly. "And I guess it was."

"It was," Bosco said softly, remembering the sound of the shot, stark and brutal in the close quarters of the hotel room. Remembering how surprised he had been, how _staggered_ he had been, and how quickly he'd managed to react nonetheless. Then the fevered, half-remembered screaming match that followed, the second standoff in which he had been sure he would have to finish the job Faith (_Faith!_) had started, that he would have to kill Cruz.

And through it all, the only thing he could think about was the first night he and Cruz had slept together. The night after the fire, the night after her sister died, rutting like a couple of animals on the floor of her apartment. He'd kept seeing that, remembering how it had _felt_, all the while waiting for the moment when he would have to blow her brains out. He would see Cruz as she was when she met him at the door, dressed only in her robe, hair still wet from her shower and hanging in erotic disarray, skin beaded with moisture, and the way the air had felt between them, the way it had _crackled_, and how he'd _known_ what was going to happen between them from almost the minute he walked in the door ... and then his mind's eye would _blink_, and he would be in the hotel room again, wondering how it would feel when he squeezed the trigger, wondering _what_ he would feel when Cruz was lying on the floor with half her head missing in action. Sex and death and sex and death, flashing from one to the other as if through the shutter of a camera. It was grotesque.

"Yokas's bullet takes Cruz in the shoulder," Schaeffer went on, the detective's rough voice again breaking into his thoughts and dragging him back to the present. "You fire one round at Cruz but miss. Yokas dives behind a couch. Noble's against the wall pissing his pants. Cruz drops to her knees and you start facing off all over again. Now, this is the part I still have trouble with - Cruz was on her knees, still conscious and still a threat, pointing her weapon at Officer Yokas?"

Bosco nodded. "Yeah. So?"

Schaeffer shook his head. "To be blunt, I find that extremely unlikely. Given her injury, that's almost _superhuman_. Do you realize that, Boscorelli?"

Bosco shrugged uneasily, thinking that this was grim irony - Schaeffer seems to buy the lie of Cruz's initial threat and then finds something fishy in what really happened. "It's the truth. Cruz is tough."

"From what I heard, that bullet nearly took her goddam _arm_ off. I _guess_ she's tough. Okay, I believe you. For now. So there's yet _another_ stalemate, and then Cruz finally goes down. Is that all correct?"

"Pretty much."

"'Pretty much?' How about a 'yes' or a 'no,' Boscorelli?"

"Yes."

Schaeffer exhaled and sat back in his chair. He looked at Bosco for a long time, maybe as long as thirty seconds, studying him contemplatively.

Finally, he said: "You have a small penis, don't you, Boscorelli?"

It was spoken in the tone of a perfectly natural question, as if Schaeffer was idly asking him what he liked on his toast - _jam or butter?_ For a moment Bosco could only gape at him, utterly floored. Grady, Schaeffer's Strong Silent partner (lackey), was trying to hide the fact that he was laughing into his palm. Whitney, the PBA rep, coughed lightly and fired Schaeffer a warning look. The detective either didn't see it or pretended not to.

Bosco leaned forward, head tilted to one side as if to hear better. "_Excuse_ me?"

Schaeffer didn't so much as blink. "I said: you have a small penis, don't you, Boscorelli?"

Bosco looked at Swersky for support, but the Lieu still refused to meet his eyes; he didn't even look surprised. He still didn't even look _interested_, his mind apparently a million miles away. Bosco turned back to Schaeffer, mouth still agape.

Schaeffer only watched him with his bland, close-set gray eyes. If it was a joke, he was letting it spin itself out.

"Detective ..." Whitney began tentatively.

Schaeffer finally cracked and waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, relax, pee-wee. He doesn't actually have to answer." He turned to Bosco again. "Sorry if I offended you, Boscorelli - I know you're a man of delicate sensibilities. It's just that I can't figure you out. I've read your file, and all I can come up with is that you suffer from some kind of crippling inferiority complex ... and if a man is packing a derringer instead of a magnum in his drawers, that usually does the trick. Reading some of it, I can't imagine why you haven't been fired before now. Or killed. I'd say you should have been killed a hundred times over by now. They say God looks out for drunks and small children. Maybe God also looks out for guys with little dicks." Schaeffer looked up at the ceiling in a pantomime of deep philosophical thought, hands spread, palms-up. "Maybe He feels bad for shortchanging them."

The initial shock behind him, Bosco found his face growing hot with shame and building fury. He'd been expecting another grilling after Schaeffer finished his recap, even a point-blank accusation - _we know Yokas shot Cruz in cold blood, so what say you now, Boscorelli?_ In its own way, this was almost as bad. He'd dealt with IAB before, and this was _not_ IAB, this was not how rat-squad detectives were supposed to speak or act. Not _at all_.

Bosco realized - with something like relief - that he had every right to be indignant.

It sort of gave him the upper hand, didn't it?

"Is there a point?" he said, and grinned a big, savage (and rather Schaeffer-ish) grin. "'Cause if there is, you might want to get to it before I come around this table and kick your ass."

Schaeffer suddenly sprang forward in his seat, all traces of that light good humor disappearing instantly. The unexpected ferocity of it made Bosco falter and pull away.

"The point is," Schaeffer said, voice low and dangerous. "Let's talk about _you_, Boscorelli. I believe you, you know - I believe everything you said. About Cruz going off on a rant, about her pulling a gun on Yokas, everything. Even that stuff about Cruz trying to stand her ground after taking a dumdum in the shoulder. Off the record, you should know that Yokas is almost certainly in the clear. And as for the good Sergeant ... heh, well, of course she's going down, and going down _hard._ We arrested her earlier today, in fact."

Bosco looked up sharply. "Cruz?"

Schaeffer sighed wearily and sat back again, shaking his head. "Jesus Christ. No, Boscorelli, the Queen of England. Yes, _Cruz_."

"That was fast."

Schaeffer smiled, a thin, cryptic little smile that immediately set Bosco's alarm bells ringing. "Yes," the detective said wryly. "It _was_ fast, wasn't it?"

_He's got something. Oh, he's got some bomb he just can't wait to unload on me. I don't think it's anything to do with Faith, but whatever it is, you can bet your ass it isn't good. They arrested Cruz. Shit. They're still getting all their facts straight even now, and she's sure not going anywhere. Why be in such a hurry?_

Bosco shrugged inwardly decided it was best not to pursue it. In time, it would all come out. If he'd learned nothing else from all that had happened over the course of the year, it was that when you were this far in, things could probably only get worse. And you'd be smart not to keep wishing yourself toward it.

"So what about me?" he said after a moment.

The detective shrugged. "What about you? Well, let's see ... you've already admitted that over the past eight months you backed Cruz up on everything she did, every report she filed. Your name is on those reports, but you know you don't need to worry about going down for them alone - we already know Cruz's stink is all over them. Now, what else ... ah, yes ... she falsified a dying declaration against one Vernon Marks, which you backed her up on. Marks ordered a hit on a twelve-year-old boy, and I don't doubt for a second that he did it. But guess what, Boscorelli? Marks is gonna walk."

Bosco went livid, and before he could stop himself he was shouting a throaty, "That's _bullshit!_" across the table. He'd been expecting this, of course, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. _Marks_. Marks was gonna walk, that swaggering, cocky son of a bitch was gonna be set loose. Ordered a hit on a little kid - that was absolutely true. On Miguel. Miguel White. Sent some homeboy with a MAC-10 to kill the kid while he was riding to Mercy in an _ambulance_, for Christ's sake. And the homeboy hadn't been too picky about who got in the way, either.

_Marks is where it starts_, that cooler, sober-sounding part of his mind said. _But brother, just remember this - Marks is _only _where it starts._

"Bullshit is right," Schaeffer said. "I absolutely concur with you there. And you know it won't just be Marks, either. But who's to blame, Boscorelli? Hmm? Cruz, that's who. And you. You both sicken me."

"With all due respect," Whitney broke in timidly, making his first real contribution to the discussion. "Can we please confine ourselves to the incident in Aaron Noble's hotel room ...?"

Schaeffer shrugged, eyes wide and innocent. "Sure. Absolutely. Of course. But I have to say, I feel that this is _all_ relevant, that it's all connected to the same basic problem. I also feel I should tell Officer Boscorelli what's been going on behind his back while he and his little gal-pal were running around rewriting the law up, down and sideways."

Schaeffer opened his briefcase and produced a battered yellow notepad. "Next out of the bag: we have this. You say Cruz brought this to the bar the night of the shooting and handed it back to you?"

"Yeah."

"After she took the trouble of stealing it from Aaron Noble? I still can't figure out _that_ logic. Any guesses?"

Bosco shrugged weakly. "Guess she had a look through it and figured nothing in it could hurt her. She said it was all hearsay."

"It's still another nail in her coffin," Schaeffer said, tossing the pad aside. "Pardon the expression. In a way she's right - on its own, the notebook is useless. Problem is, it backs up everything we've already gathered on her."

Bosco froze.

"What do you mean?" he said slowly. "What you've already _gathered_ on her?"

Schaeffer grinned, sat back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head. "I'm a very happy man today, Boscorelli, in case you haven't noticed." He laughed. "Go ahead and ask me why."

"Why?" Bosco said hoarsely. His throat suddenly felt as if it had closed to a pinhole.

"Internal Affairs has been investigating the Fifty-Fifth Precinct's Anti-Crime unit for about a year now. With particular attention focused on the erstwhile Sergeant Cruz." He turned to Grady and whispered something Bosco didn't catch. It looked like _go get her_.

Detective Grady got up and left the room. Bosco barely noticed him, his eyes locked on Schaeffer, heart pounding hard in his chest. He also didn't notice that both Swersky and the PBA rep were now watching the detective warily.

Schaeffer looked up at the ceiling and appeared to address some audience only he could see. "Interesting thing about Cruz," he said in loud, lecture-hall tones. "Everybody knew what she was, everybody always _has_ known, but she was always so goddamned _bulletproof_. Absolutely bulletproof. I mean, she had spots on her record - big ugly smears, really - as many reprimands as she had citations, and she even ended up pretty close to the fire a couple of times." Schaeffer looked back at Bosco. "She got herself into a sticky mess a few years back, did you know that? That time it was money - her partner and a few other guys on her team were pocketing drug money. Except _she_ wasn't. Too smart, maybe. Or maybe she just covered her tracks better than the others. Who knows? At any rate, she came out clean, just like always, slick as shit through the goose." He shook his head. "Goddamned aggravating, I can tell you. Never could get anything _solid_ on her."

Schaeffer took a deep breath and eyed Bosco thoughtfully.

Then he said: "Did you know that in the past two years, two of Cruz's Confidential Informants have turned up dead?"

Bosco shook his head numbly. He was peripherally aware that his right leg was jittering and jiving under the table again.

Schaeffer nodded. "Oh yes. A small-time drug dealer named Leonard Gaines in 2001, and a recovering crack addict named Michael Alvarez in 2002."

Bosco suddenly saw where this was going. He thought he was beginning to see where _all_ of this was going, and he rejected the notion immediately.

"Okay, so what?" he heard himself say. "It happens. The jagoffs find out these guys have turned on them, and there's hell to pay. It's exactly what happened with Noble."

"Oh come on, Boscorelli," Schaeffer chided him. "It's part of Cruz's responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. But that's not even the point - the point is, these two deaths happened in very close proximity to one another, and both had been shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Now, I'll grant you that it was a different gun and a different caliber in each case." Schaeffer smiled a bland, innocent smile. "But it's still interesting. Wouldn't you say?"

"No," Bosco said simply.

"'No?' What do you mean, 'no,' Boscorelli? No, it's not interesting?"

"You're saying Cruz killed them. _Executed_ them. I'm saying no. You're wrong."

"Maybe I _am_ saying that. Maybe I'm not. But didn't you just sit here and tell me that Cruz aimed a loaded gun at Officer Yokas with intent to kill?"

Bosco nodded helplessly. _Trapped, _he thought wildly, and though his face was stony, inside he was laughing like a maniac, laughing at the perfect, cosmic absurdity of it. Laughing even though it was pretty fucking far from funny._ Trapped! Cruz wasn't gonna hurt Faith, she wasn't gonna _kill_ her over some fucking C.I., over a fucking _gun_. I still don't buy that. I can believe a lot of things about Cruz, but not that. Ruthless I can believe, dirty I can believe, but _psychopath_ is where I draw the line. No way._

"Why?" Bosco said. Out loud his voice sounded whiny and puerile. "Why would she kill her own informants?"

The detective shrugged. "That's what we're gonna have to find out, aren't we? Maybe they were screwing her around, feeding her bad tips. Pissing her off. Maybe she just got tired of looking at them. Who knows?"

"Even if she did something like that, she wouldn't be stupid enough to kill them both in the same place, in the same way."

Schaeffer smiled. "Ever hear the expression 'hiding in plain sight,' Boscorelli? Cruz figures, hey, these guys are just a couple of worthless skells. Nobody'll ask questions about 'em. If they both turn up dead in the same place, so what? Doesn't mean anything. Why would it? What exactly points to _her_ specifically?" Schaeffer spread his hands in a grandiose shrug. "Why, _nothing_!"

"Right," Bosco said, perplexed now. "Exactly. So what's the problem?"

"The problem is, Alvarez's mother filed a complaint with us not long before he was killed. She said Anti-Crime officers had been harassing her family and threatening her son. Cruz was one of those identified. So we started looking around. A few others came forward and told us that Anti-Crime cops were involved in some shady stuff. Stuff involving drugs, money, a few shootings people felt might have been unjustified. They told us about how Cruz was known as Two-Bags on the street because she carried dope around to blackmail people with. Or bribe junkies with."

Schaeffer sighed. "Long story short, IA started getting very interested, and we began an investigation. And we weren't about to let our little snakey-poo slither away on us again. Remember that other scandal I mentioned, the money thing? That time the break came from this rookie, guy named Hart. His testimony put those cops away, including Cruz's partner - that guy ended up shooting himself, as I recall. Hart took a lot of shit over it, of course, and ended up having to quit. Very unfortunate. Kid had potential."

"Too bad," Bosco said neutrally. Under the table, his knee was at it again - the left one this time. He made it stop with an irritated little wince that he hoped no-one noticed. The PBA rep, pointless little twerp that he was, was right - this had gone _way_ off course, and Bosco didn't like the direction it was headed in. Not one bit. And here he had been worried about _Faith_. He'd been worried that Schaeffer was going to sit here and grill him about exactly how Officer Yokas came to her decision to put Cruz in a box.

"What made it even _more_ unfortunate - and I'm aware I'm repeating myself here - was that Hart didn't get anything on _Cruz_," Schaeffer went on. "Everybody _but_. I suppose I have to give the kid credit for not just making something up, but I can't tell you how frustrating that was - to nail everybody else and have her waltz away, knowing the whole time that she was the worst of the bunch. So this time around, we knew we'd better do things a bit differently." Schaeffer looked up and called over to the door, "You can come back in now, Ian. Bring our friend with you, if she's ready."

The door opened and Detective Grady came back in. He was followed by a young woman. A young woman who was dressed in civvies and wearing a badge around her neck.

A young woman Bosco recognized immediately.

"What is this?" Swersky said darkly, glaring at Schaeffer.

"Reyes," Bosco breathed. "Sergeant Reyes."

For once Schaeffer looked genuinely surprised. "You've actually met? Face-to-face?"

Bosco started to reply but Reyes beat him to it. Her eyes had fallen on him the moment she entered the room and stuck fast. "We worked a shift together once. Just before he started working with Cruz."

"Isn't that interesting," Schaeffer said mildly. "That was never in any of your reports, Chris."

Reyes never took her eyes off Bosco. "Wasn't relevant. It was only the one day, and my Minute-Man here never did anything illegal when he was with me. Acted like a jackass, nearly got both of us killed, but nothing illegal."

Schaeffer nodded. "Well, at any rate, you two still haven't been properly introduced. Officer Boscorelli, I want you to say a big friendly hello to Detective Christina Reyes, Internal Affairs."

"Now listen!" Whitney piped up indignantly, at last showing some real emotion. "This isn't the time or the place for - "

"But I think it is!" Schaeffer shouted back. Then, in a gentler, almost fatherly tone Cruz would have recognized as completely bogus and very dangerous: "I told you - this is all hooked together. What happened in Noble's room leads back to the same core problem. So let's get all our cards on the table, shall we?"

"You," Bosco said quietly, glaring at Reyes, ignoring the detective entirely. He tried on his earlier wide (and Schaeffer-ish) grin and this time it only came out feeling pasted-on, phony. "You were ... you were working for this guy the whole time? You were ... you were _spying_ on Anti-Crime?"

Reyes didn't answer. She held his eyes evenly, her face blank, and Bosco heard himself blurt out helplessly, stupidly: "_You worked the same desk as Cruz!_"

She snorted a short laugh but didn't smile. "Best place to be, I'd say."

"It's almost poetic, isn't it?" Schaeffer agreed, grinning. "Reyes works one shift, Cruz works the next. Same desk. Cruz leaves all her shit lying around because she thinks Chris here is as dirty as the rest of them. Anti-Crime cops _got each other's backs_, after all. It came together so perfectly that it was ... well, like I said, it was _poetic_. A work of art. Reyes and Cruz. Day and night. Good and bad. Right and wrong." Schaeffer laughed. "I'm gonna retire and write a fucking _book_ on this, my friend. Noble better look out."

"Look," Swersky said sharply. "I know I'm just talking into the wind here, but I have to agree that this isn't - "

"Isn't what?" Schaeffer broke in lightly. He reached over and poured himself another glass of water, which he began to sip with the lazy calm of a man at a backyard cocktail party. "The 'time or place?' Why not? I think Boscorelli has a right to know what's been going on right under his nose, don't you?" He looked at Bosco and tipped his glass at him in a little salute. "I'll bet you wish you never stepped through Anti-Crime's door. Don't you, little man?"

But Bosco was no longer the slightest bit interested in Schaeffer; his attention was fixed solely on Reyes, who was still watching him with that maddening, cool disdain. By his estimation it would take two or three steps to close the distance between them and throttle her, and he was sorely tempted to test the theory. He kept trying to remind himself that this was all bought and paid for, this was all part of what he had coming to him ... but it _wasn't_, this wasn't what he'd expected, it wasn't what he'd _wanted_, and what he felt now was only a queasy kind of humiliation. Humiliation, because it had all been so much bigger than him, right from the beginning. He had struggled so fiercely with himself over the decision to come forward and do what was right, and now it comes out that IAB knew everything anyway. He'd been _played_, he had tried to take the moral high road and now he was just another fish caught in this asshole's net.

This asshole and his little spying bitch.

"Do you know what they'll do to you?" Bosco whispered fiercely at Reyes, stepping forward and getting right in her face. "Do you know what's gonna _happen_ to you? Huh? How can you stand there like that? Huh? Do you know what's gonna happen to you when people find out what you are?"

Reyes held her ground. "I'm not ashamed of 'what I am,' Boscorelli," she said coldly. "I did my job. I did it _well_. And I don't have any regrets."

"She's right," Schaeffer agreed placidly, taking a long, wet chug that drained his glass. "J.D. Hart was just some kid who didn't know what he was looking at. Chris here is my professional Cruz-buster. She knew what she was after, and she got it."

But Bosco was still as focused on Reyes as she was on him, and again he found his mouth going off before his brain knew what was happening. "You're a fucking _rat_."

Reyes didn't flinch.

"Oh, can you _hear_ yourself, Boscorelli?" Schaeffer almost moaned. "You're as much a 'rat' as Chris here. You've come forward and confessed. Hell, I suppose I have to respect that. And you already admitted yourself that Cruz is dirty. Which is something pretty much everybody already knew anyway - but every little bit helps, right? She did us a big favor by going _loco_ against Yokas, you know. Sped things along. Finished the job. Added that final loving touch. It's all over now, and it's been a big success. Arrests have already been made, even as we've been sitting here. We should go up to Anti-Crime later on and watch the fun - they'll be ripping the place apart right now."

He stood up. "I'm a bit of a showman, Boscorelli. I'll admit that, and I don't apologize for it. Believe it or not, it's because I take my job very seriously. So does Detective Reyes. I enjoy putting an end to cops like Cruz and her little gang of thugs."

"Yeah," Bosco said bitterly. "Yeah, I picked up on that."

"Now, let's finish up here. You'll be placed under arrest. For obstruction, the false reports on the dying declaration and the Nunez thing. You understand that?"

Bosco nodded miserably.

"We'll go through the formalities later. Also, whether the charges stick or not, you're gonna lose your job. You understand _that?_"

Bosco didn't even bother nodding this time. So they were going to serve him his walking papers at this little get-together after all. Shouldn't come as much of a surprise, he supposed, but the reality of the road he was now headed down could still hit him from a fresh angle. Like Marks. Like the idea of Vernon Marks being cut loose. _Jesus._

_Was there even a point to this? _he thought wearily._ Was there even a point to this whole goddam interview, interrogation, Inquisition, whatever you want to call it? Or was it really just this jagoff making an ass out of me for his own amusement? And where the fuck was Swersky the whole time? Why'd the son of a bitch sit here and _allow_ all of it?_

"Boscorelli?"

"Yes!" he shouted. He put a hand to his forehead, behind which he thought he could feel the first sparks of a monster migraine starting to flare up. "Shit, I was gonna quit anyway!"

"We've been concentrating on the long-term members of Anti-Crime, and you've only worked with them sporadically. You're lucky to be getting off as lightly as you are. If half of what we have on Cruz is proven in court - and it will be - she'll be wearing dentures by the time she gets out of prison." Schaeffer's serene expression didn't change, but his eyes grew distant and cold in a way Bosco found decidedly familiar. "There won't be any deals for her, either. No plea-bargains, no compromises. I am going to personally make sure she goes away for a long time and serves every last second." Schaeffer picked up his briefcase and Noble's notepad. "Hell, if it were up to me, she'd get the black needle. Put her down like the rabid dog she is."

_Jesus, he's exactly like her_, Bosco thought with a humorless internal chuckle. _In his own way, he's exactly like Cruz. I wonder if he's ever thought of that. I wonder what he'd think if I _told _him that? Or here's one - I wonder what he would have done in that hotel room if he'd been in Faith's shoes? _

Faith.

Bosco looked up. "What about Faith?"

Schaeffer, in the midst of stuffing Noble's notepad back into his briefcase, looked at him blankly. "What about her?"

"You're _sure_ she's gonna be okay?"

The detective snapped the case closed and shrugged. "Why shouldn't she be? What's she done besides break into that room - which, incidentally, she did for all the right reasons? Shooting Cruz was clearly self-defense. Dear, sweet Maritza disagrees, of course, but then dear, sweet Maritza lied about everything else, and I'd take Yokas's word over that maniac's any day. Yokas is free and clear, Boscorelli. Probably be back on the job by the end of the week."

Bosco nodded. He had expected to feel something - a little relief, at least - but he found there was really nothing to speak of. Faith and questions about her fate really didn't seem to hold much interest for him these days; if he asked them, it was only as an afterthought and only out of a forced sense of duty. The fact was, he didn't know Faith anymore. That sounded terribly melodramatic - as melodramatic as the image of a beaten and humbled Cruz being led through a noisy cellblock to her doom - but it was true: he didn't know Faith Yokas anymore. He looked at Schaeffer again, and again he saw an almost geometrically perfect irony; this dickhead was suggesting that _Cruz_ was the cold-blooded killer. What about Faith? What about Faith trying to line up a kill-shot on Cruz with no real provocation?

_She said she feared for her life. She said she believed Cruz was nuts. Look at 'Ritza's behavior over the last few months and tell me if maybe - just _maybe_ - Faith was right. _

He pushed that away. _Nuts_ - insanity, even in the most clinical sense - was way too strong. Faith had to find a way of rationalizing what she did, and so she'd decided to play the _crazy_ card. Cruz was not insane. She was ...

_Disturbed. _

No. No, that wasn't the right word, either.

_Then why did it come to you so quickly?_

Bosco exhaled wearily and ran his hands over his face. He was getting so tired of fighting with himself, with this wheedling conscience that seemed to have awakened in him. Cruz was not disturbed, Cruz was not insane, Cruz was just a dirty cop who'd gotten too close to the job, who'd taken the job too personally and formed grudges too easily (against criminals _and_ against fellow officers), a dirty cop who only saw the ends and didn't care who she stepped on to get there. Now she was paying the price, and that was the end of it. Cruz, at least, he could understand.

But Faith ... _Faith_ ...

_Does it even matter now? Does _any_ of this even matter now? You should be more worried about your own ass at the moment, pal. Not Cruz's. Not Faith's. _Yours.

There was a sudden loud, harsh _flik!_ sound that startled him; somebody snapping their fingers to get his attention. "Boscorelli? Hey, Boscorelli. Wake up."

Schaeffer. Who else?

Bosco looked up and saw that the detective was now standing next to the door, briefcase in hand. Swersky was next to him, looking off into space with that same expression of distant worry ... though now, at last, it looked tinged with disgust as well. Swersky obviously didn't care much for having been kept in the dark about Schaeffer's little game, but even so Bosco had stopped expecting any sympathy from him. Swersky's face was almost that of a heartbroken father, and Bosco was coming to believe that the Lieu knew that this one was a lost cause. That was why he'd kept his peace while Schaeffer played his games; Swersky knew there was no point in trying to defend Bosco, because Bosco had already sold himself out.

Swersky knew this one belonged to IAB. To _Schaeffer_.

Patrick Whitney was still at the table, rummaging self-consciously through his own briefcase. Bosco stared hard at him, and for the first time he wondered if Schaeffer had pulled strings to make sure the ineffective little shit ended up in here with them. Wouldn't surprise him. At this point, very little would surprise him.

Whitney, perhaps sensing that he was being watched, paused and looked up ... and then, incredibly, he flashed Bosco a lame little sympathetic smile. Bosco looked away quickly. Throttling Whitney had crossed his mind, too.

His eyes fell on Reyes.

_Reyes_.

Reyes still didn't seem to have lost her intense, owlish interest in him. Reyes, standing there in her street clothes, badge still on its fine silver chain around her neck, looking just as she did the day he'd met her. The day he'd _ridden_ with her. That had been almost a year ago, but he still remembered what it had been like. He remembered what _she_ had been like, and never in a thousand years would he ever have guessed what she really was, what she was really doing. He could not recall having seen anything in her behavior that might have tipped him off. Hell, he even remembered Reyes dishing out some very convincing weary-cop cynicism, complaining about how they have too much holding them back, too many governing bodies to answer to. Sergeant Reyes, just another haggard and jaded Anti-Crime cop, no different than Cruz or any of the others. If nothing else, the woman was a top notch actress.

Across the room, Schaeffer muttered something side-mouth to Swersky. Swersky hissed something back at him - Bosco couldn't hear the words, but he imagined it was probably something to the effect of _we're not done talking about this just yet_. The Lieutenant fired a final hard look at Bosco, one that was so morose and so full of regret that it almost looked like grief. Then he banged the door open and stalked out of the room.

And so the exodus began. Ian Grady went next, as silent as ever. Reyes muttered something unintelligible under her breath, gave Bosco her own version of Swersky's glare, and then turned and followed Grady out without another word. Whitney took this minor distraction as an opportunity to make his own exit, coughing nervously as he passed Bosco. He was quite clearly expecting a kick in the ass to help him on his way, and Bosco again had to fight the urge to extend a foot and oblige him.

He was now alone in the room with Detective Schaeffer.

The big man was watching him with his usual bland, half-interested curiosity, his hand on the doorknob, eyebrows raised. "We're done here. You coming or not, Boscorelli?"

Bosco looked at the detective and decided he wasn't. Not yet, anyway. He actually wanted to be the last one out of the room. He didn't quite know why that was, but he suspected it had something to do with not appearing hemmed-in, to not appear as a prisoner, to not look as if he were being _led_ to his fate. He wanted no one behind him, no one flanking him, and he certainly did _not_ want to feel his arm taken hold of. Particularly not by Schaeffer. He wanted to walk into this under his own power. Unassisted.

He was about to tell the detective to get his ass in gear when his eyes lit on the briefcase in Schaeffer's hand - the briefcase with Noble's notebook inside - and something else occurred to him. Another loose end. "What about Noble?"

"What?"

"Aaron Noble," Bosco said, motioning at the briefcase. "What happens to him now?"

Schaeffer laughed. "'What about Faith?'" he mocked, amiably enough. "'What about Noble?' You seem so concerned with everybody else's welfare, Boscorelli. Everybody's but your own. That's very ... well, that's very _noble_ of you."

"What happens to him?"

Schaeffer sighed. "Stop me if you've heard this one: Once upon a time, a celebrated writer shot and killed a biker by the name of William Griffin. Mr. Writer was then coerced by a Wicked Witch and her Faithful Manservant to lie about it. This was so the Wicked Witch wouldn't lose her favorite snitch. She then returned Mr. Writer's gun to him - "

"You ever get tired of being such a miserable bastard?" Bosco flared.

Again Schaeffer abruptly switched gears from flippant to deadly serious, and again the change was alarming, almost frightening. "It was an above-the-board case of _self-defense_," Schaeffer said coldly, stabbing a finger at him. "Noble ran away from it _only_ because you and Cruz _made_ him run away from it. Though I admit it was probably mostly Cruz. Am I right?"

"The guy's a fucking _junkie_!" Bosco shouted, realizing in some vague way that he was only stalling for time here, trying to put off the inevitable. He was ready, he was still ready to face what was waiting, but he was also quite naturally scared. And he desperately wanted to take Aaron Noble down with him; the writer deserved it as much as anyone else. "He hung out with _drug dealers_, for God's sake! He knew the risks!"

"Noble had every right to meet with whomever he wanted to meet with in order to research his books," Schaeffer said gently. "It's called freedom of association. That was his profession. That was his _living_. He was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, and if Willie G. tried to pop a cap in him, Noble was well within his rights to pop one in Willie. He went in on the lie with you and Cruz because you were cops, _crooked_ cops, and he was intimidated by you. No jury would convict him."

_Argue with him all day, and he'll still one-up you every time, _Bosco's sober mind-voice intoned._ You'll have to leave here sooner or later. Better make it sooner. Or do you like this guy's company that much?_

Bosco licked his lips nervously and started for the door. He didn't want Schaeffer behind him, though. He really didn't.

He was almost there when something else popped into his mind and promptly exited by way of his mouth. "What about the bullets?"

"Jesus," Schaeffer hissed under his breath, and looked at his watch. "_What_ bullets? Look, Boscorelli, I've got other places to be -"

"Dumdums!" Bosco cried. "Those things are fucking _illegal_!"

"Don't get your panties in such a knot. Noble may still be charged for that. But if you want my opinion, it'd be hardly worth pursuing. In his own way Noble helped take down some of the dirtiest cops in the NYPD without even realizing it, and he walked away with a sore paw in the process. He's learned his lesson."

Bosco all but hopped into the air, jabbing a triumphant finger at Schaeffer, aping what the detective had done a moment ago. "_You're gonna look the other way!_" he spat viciously. He was grinning like a madman, and he had to wonder if he _was_ going mad, because suddenly making sure Noble went down seemed to be the most important thing in the world to him. That, and scoring even the pettiest victory over Schaeffer. "After all that shit about cops doing the right thing, you're gonna just look the other way and let him walk! You're as bad as Cruz."

"From anyone else that might hurt," Schaeffer said, utterly unruffled. "But you, I'm afraid, lack the credibility to make it sound like a serious insult. Now I'm going to use my press-conference voice on you, so listen closely: _Aaron Noble will not be treated any differently because of his celebrity, or for any other reason. I assure you of it._" Schaeffer grunted laughter and rolled his eyes. "Shit, why am I even arguing with you about it? Noble isn't even my problem. Look, Boscorelli - let's just get out of here and finish our business so we don't have to see each other again. Sound good?"

Bosco's mind cycled through a number of possible hot-blooded comebacks, but he could already feel himself deflating. This was all too much, too much to get his head around on such short notice. Too much, too fast. It was all moving too fast for him, it _had_ been moving too fast for him right from the hotel room, right from the moment Faith turned that fucking gun on Cruz, from the very second the bullet left the barrel and the blood started to flow. Before that, even. It had started moving too fast when they'd been standing in that shitty little hovel where Noble had gone to meet with Stevie Nunez. Willie G. dead on the floor, Cruz handing Noble's gun back to him, telling him to make himself scarce. And then blaming Nunez. And they'd actually _caught_ Nunez. They weren't supposed to catch him, but they had. Everything had been so perfectly screwed up, right from the start.

And now Reyes turns out to be IAB and Faith was a cold-blooded killer and his career was over and Cruz was maimed for life and headed for a long (and probably brutal) stretch in prison and Noble was going to walk away a free man it was crazy, it was all so fucking _crazy_, and he had to get out of here, get away from this man in front of him before he really started to lose it. Before he lost his wits and his baser instincts took over and he started a fight. An actual fistfight. One he'd probably lose, by the look of the detective.

Bosco started for the door. Almost _lurched_ for it, blindly.

Schaeffer stepped lightly aside, held it open for him, and then followed him out.


	6. Chapter 5: Cruz

Chapter 5

_Cruz_

I.

Today.

It would be today, it would _have_ to be today. If she didn't do it today, she wouldn't do it at all. And that was not an option.

There were obstacles, yes. Quite a lot of them. Many of them looked impossible, and perhaps they were. If so, she would find out in time. But she would try, and if there was any justice, she would succeed.

She was calm now, almost serene, and it had nothing to do with painkillers. The medication had worn off, and she had no intention of letting them give her any more. Her shoulder was bad now, yes, _very_ bad, but that was all right. Because she had decided that this must be her punishment. Her penance for failing Lettie. That made sense, didn't it? She had promised her father that she would look out for her, protect her, and she had failed. She had weakened and she had failed. If she deserved to be punished for anything, it was that. And with that in mind, she found she could endure the pain. She could endure it just fine.

And anyway, physical distress was not the worst of her problems at the moment.

First, there was the bed. They hadn't cuffed her to the safety rail, but the rail itself was in the way; it was the kind that ran all the way from the head of the bed to the foot. She might be able to lower it, but that might make noise and bring a nurse. The nurse would call the cop who was guarding the door, and they'd restrain her for sure. She couldn't afford to get careless, couldn't rush into things. She would need to take it slow and easy, think of this the same way she thought of doing her job. Say, sneaking into a crackhouse through the back door, knowing that even the smallest slipup would be unacceptable, that the slightest mistake would probably mean the end of her life. The stakes here were just as high, only instead of sneaking in, here she would be sneaking _out_. Unarmed, of course, and with a great physical handicap.

_It'll never work, _a little traitor voice whispered._ They'll have you before you get to the end of the hall. _

_Well, so what? At least I'll have tried. _

Cruz glanced over at the digital clock next to her bed.

Eleven thirty. Half an hour left until the guard's lunch break.

Very soon now. She would have to make her first move very soon.

Schaeffer, the bastard, had tormented her a little more before leaving her to ponder her new situation. First, he'd told her about the paramedic and the firefighter. There had been an explosion, Schaeffer said, a direct result of the chase that she and Bosco had pursued against Buford, and the subsequent pileup that Buford's abandoned car had caused. As it turned out, the biker had fitted his mean machine with a nitro kit. Unfortunately, nobody had been told about this happy little fact, and a fire had reached the nitrous tanks right in the middle of the rescue operation. The result: one very dead medic and one charbroiled firefighter - and that, Schaeffer said, was a miracle considering all the other innocent bystanders who could have bought it as well. The medic had been killed almost instantly, blown in half while trying to help someone in one of the other cars. The firefighter was still hanging on by a thread, though by all accounts he probably would have been better off if he'd been killed outright as well; Schaeffer had told her that even doped up, the poor bastard screamed himself hoarse most of the time.

"And you know, Cruz, it really should be you," Schaeffer had said, leaning in close and breathing the words in her ear like a lover. "It should be you up there in the burn unit with half your skin baked off, screaming yourself to sleep. Not Johnson. Because it's your fault he's there. Just like it's your fault the paramedic went to the morgue in two pieces."

This little tale was supposed to upset her. It hadn't. Made no impression whatsoever. It wasn't that she couldn't sympathize with other people's suffering - she could. After all, she wasn't a _monster_. But this was a war, and the first rule of war is that there are casualties. The second rule is that they are quite often going to be _innocent_ casualties, bystanders caught in the crossfire. And that was the situation you had here - the paramedic and the firefighter were collateral damage. Hard truths to be sure, but with things the way they were it was not a matter of _if_ you paid your part of the price but _when_ - at some point everyone is going to be touched by it, everyone is going to have to throw their portion into the pot. Letitia Cruz had, and in that Maritza Cruz had as well. _Nobody_ got off easy.

She still believed that, and a dickless pencil-pusher like Schaeffer wasn't going to change it, so instead of rising to his taunts, she had calmly asked to make her phone call. She had intended to call Eddie Dade. Dade was her closest colleague from Anti-Crime, someone she thought she could trust to help her.

"Dade's been arrested!" Schaeffer had laughed cheerfully. "My God, woman, you really aren't seeing the _theme_ here, are you? The Fifty-Fifth Precinct no longer _has_ an Anti-Crime unit. It's gone. Finito. We've been looking into you guys for a long time, and now we've got you."

So that was how she found out that _Anti-Crime_ had been the subject of an investigation, not just her. And she had been unable to think of anyone else to call. She'd thought briefly of Ramon Valenzuela, a detective from Major Cases. They'd been close at one time - lovers, in fact - but she didn't think he would put his career and freedom on the line to help her. When it came right down to it, she supposed she wouldn't ask him to. Beyond Ramon, though, there was no one, and she sure as hell wasn't calling an attorney. Calling an attorney would be as good as an admission of guilt. She had nothing to be guilty about -

_(Lettie)_

and she would apologize for nothing. _Nothing._

So she had nobody to rely on but herself.

That was okay - she'd spent a good chunk of her life relying on nobody but herself.

Schaeffer had finally left, posting the cop on her door. Cruz had really only seen the guard once, a young female cop who was pretty in a mild, unremarkable way and had tied her dirty-blonde hair in a tight bun she probably thought made her look severe. She was, in fact, about as physically threatening as a girl scout, just some young rookie who'd probably been given this light duty to make her feel important. Big Bad Detective Schaeffer says, "guard the Anti-Crime bitch I just arrested," and the rookie feels all big and tough. Like she's part of the big investigation. If she were at the top of her game, Cruz might simply try to lure the girl (and _girl_ was what she was, make no mistake) into the room and knock her out. But of course, if she were at the top of her game, she wouldn't be here in the first place. A more mundane approach was called for - she would have to wait for the guard to leave for lunch. From watching her yesterday, Cruz knew she left at twelve noon on the mark and stayed gone for about forty-five minutes. That _should_ leave a big enough window of opportunity. She hoped it would, anyway.

Eleven-forty now. Twenty minutes and she would know for sure.

In the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. So Cruz closed her eyes and waited, letting her mind drift, trying to be at ease in her new tranquility, the sense that whatever happened, happened. If she couldn't ignore the pain, she would at least try to acknowledge it as necessary, unchangeable. She distracted herself further by thinking about Yokas and Boscorelli. More specifically, about what she would like to _do_ to Yokas and Boscorelli. Yokas, Cruz decided, would get a bullet in each kneecap. This was simple and effective and it was poetically just - let Yokas in on the grand old experience of having a bone shattered by a bullet. Boscorelli, on the other hand, would require something slightly more spectacular. Cutting a few choice pieces off him sounded about right - Cruz knew the topography and she knew where (and what) to cut. Guys like him, half their goddamned _identities_ came from their pricks - remove it and it would probably be like ripping out his fucking _soul_. Failing that, it would at least be sure to make him scream. And Cruz wanted to hear him scream, she wanted to hear them _both_ scream, she wanted to hear them _beg_, she wanted to make sure they both took a good long time to die.

Oh _yeah_.

Such revenge fantasies were childish and pointless, but they helped pass the time. And, she reasoned, it was important to fuel the rage. Right now it was all she had.

Eleven-fifty.

Ten to go.

She was mildly surprised to realize that her nicely smoldering anger had been joined by a distinct sense of anxiety. Her heart was thudding heavily in her chest, the way it had been when Schaeffer had first appeared and ripped her out of her sleep just to arrest her. And her right hand was working again. Clenching. Unclenching. If she had anything left of her fingernails they would be carving fresh little smiles into her palm.

Cruz fixed her eyes on the clock, watching and marking the last few minutes as they dragged by. Eleven-fifty-six ... eleven-fifty-seven ... eleven-fifty-eight ... _Jesus_ ... eleven-fifty-nine ...

Twelve o'clock.

Chow-time for all pretty little rookies.

Cruz gave the kid another five minutes to get lost, counting them out. She wasn't feeling very serene anymore; her heartrate was really cranking along now, her anxiety steadily working its way up to boiling point. She was here, it was down to the wire now, she had reached the point where she couldn't put it off any longer. And not only was she getting pretty far from tranquil, she was downright scared. She'd waited for this moment, planned for it, _obsessed_ over it, and now that it was here she was _scared_.

_That's because you know you can't do it, _that part of her - that maddening Voice of Doubt - whispered again_. And you never really _intended_ to do it. No matter. It was a stupid idea anyway, bound to fail. There's just too much working against you._

Cruz took quick stock of herself and found she had to agree. Just getting out of bed was going to be a major undertaking, and the safety rail wasn't even half the problem. She was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and literally wired in; there was an IV in her right arm that would have to come out. Her useless left arm was bound snugly in a sling to keep it from shifting around, and the shoulder itself was heavily bandaged and bulky. She would need both arms in working order for what she was preparing to do. At the moment, for all intents and purposes, she was an amputee.

Again, though - the odds of success didn't matter. She had to _try_. That was the point. She wasn't going to lie here like an invalid and let them destroy her. She was going to fight. This was her last chance, her _only_ chance, and it was beginning to look like she had nothing to lose. Soon they would start the first round of reconstructive surgery on her shoulder, and that would weaken her further. Eventually, when she was sufficiently patched up, they would drag her away.

And then things would _really_ get interesting, wouldn't they? There would be a trial, one which she would almost certainly lose. Then prison. Then the civil suits would start rolling in. There were always civil suits. Everyone she'd ever locked up would be set loose, and they would all want a piece of her - if not a piece of her hide, then a piece of her bank account. Money makes everything all better, after all. Not that money would matter much to her by that point - Cruz guessed that most of her time at Riker's would be pretty well occupied with keeping her skin attached to her body.

She would not get another chance, she would not see another opportunity like this. She had to act.

_Now._

Cruz wasted no more thought on the matter; she leaned down and tore the IV out with her teeth.

There was a half-second feeling of giddy unreality, disbelief that the first step could have been so easily taken. Then her mind cleared and she slipped very neatly (and with an ease that was surprising) into cop-mode, all of her misgivings and doubt and apprehension eclipsed in an instant by a cold, unfeeling single-mindedness, the place in her psyche she always went to whenever her life was on the line.

As it was now.

First order of business was to sit up. The head of the bed had been raised up as far as it would go, but it still wasn't far enough for her to get upright on her own. Cruz slid her good arm behind her and started pushing against the bed, wriggling to build momentum.

Her shoulder immediately began to scream. She tried to push it away, ignore it, but she couldn't. Every move she made was bringing the true extent of the damage home to her.

_So don't _ignore_ the pain. That doesn't work. _Savor_ it. That's the key to beating it. Know that it's what I deserve. For Lettie. Think of Lettie. Think of her running into that meth lab, completely helpless to stop herself, practically cooking whatever was left of her brains right in front of me. I deserve this. But that doesn't mean I can't make it work for me._

Face contorted with effort and with sweat already breaking out on her forehead, Cruz squeezed her eyes shut and pushed harder.

The pain pushed back. Her concentration slipped, just long enough for some malicious and treacherous part of her mind (the thing she was coming to think of as the Voice of Doubt, perhaps) to conjure up a very unpleasant and perfectly grisly mental picture: jagged bone fragments. The mulched-up remains of her shoulder joint, the pieces shifting around, shards of bone slicing through tender flesh, grating against each other -

Cruz uttered an inarticulate curse and bit down on her tongue, _hard_, drawing blood. It was like pulling a plug, the new pain clearing her mind and shocking her back into focus just long enough for one final shove ... and then abruptly she was there, sitting up in the bed, leaning over her legs.

Everything in her head seemed to slosh forward, and the room began to spin. Her stomach gave an alarming heave and for one terrible, endless moment she thought she was going to throw up all over herself. That would probably mean the end, her little escape plan blown out of the water before it even began, and that thought was all that allowed her to hold onto her gorge.

She waited for what seemed a very long time, part of her brain crying a mindless warning over and over that the stupid fucking rookie would be back soon, that maybe yesterday's forty-five minute lunch was a fluke, maybe the little bitch wouldn't be as hungry today. She ignored it, and eventually both the nausea and the sense of vertigo passed. There was blood in her mouth now, a lot of it, and she spat it over the side of the bed with a grimace.

The safety rail was next. She thought she'd done pretty well so far (to this point she had managed to _sit up_, and to be perfectly honest that was further than she'd really expected to get), but now she needed to get her legs into the act. She looked down at them, stretched out in front of her, two vague lumps under the sheet. She had been off them for days now. They would be weak and rubbery and thoroughly untrustworthy.

No matter - it wasn't as if she had a choice. If they worked they worked and if they didn't they didn't. She pulled the sheet off and lifted her right leg over the rail, using her good arm to help it along.

The bedframe shook and the rail rattled. She froze, casting an involuntary glance at the door.

_Don't be stupid! It was nothing. Keep going or you're finished!_

True. Every second the reality of her condition was becoming more and more clear. If she slowed or faltered now ...

The left leg came next, slowly, carefully. Now she was draped over the side of the bed in a ridiculous position. The hateful hospital gown had pulled up to her hips. If the rookie came in now, the girl would see a sight she wouldn't soon forget, and Cruz doubted her first instinct would be to rush over and help, or even to put a stop to the sad little game - she guessed the cop's first instinct would probably be to _laugh_. At the absurd position Cruz was in, but more so at her stupidity for thinking she could actually escape. The kid would go home after her shift and tell her boyfriend or her husband (or maybe her _mommy_, by the look of her) about the crazy ex-cop caught hanging half in and half out of her bed, showing the world all her charms, and they'd _laugh_ ...

_You're wasting time ..._

Cruz shifted. She had to get her butt over the side now, and she had to do it without falling on the floor. Again this was something she really needed two arms for, and again it seemed like she would be working with what she had. She thought she would be able to manage - she'd been working out most of her adult life, and her right arm was probably strong enough.

She tested it a bit and then began to lift herself up, swallowing the cry of pain that kept wanting to escape and squashing it down into a series of almost inaudible little grunts, ignoring (_savoring_) the excruciating, grinding torment in her shoulder. She lifted, pushed forward, and began to slide over the safety rail.

There was a bad moment when she was sure she was going to overshoot it, when she felt herself slipping. She would tumble out of the bed onto the floor, perhaps landing directly on the bad shoulder. If that happened, they'd hear the screams halfway to Manhattan.

Then her feet touched the floor. The safety rail ground painfully against the small of her back. And then she was out.

She was standing on the floor, free of the bed.

It had been that simple.

_Simple? It took _five damned minutes

No time to dwell on it. Her success - completely unexpected success, really - encouraged her, time spent notwithstanding. And things weren't as bad as she'd feared. Her legs were a bit shaky, true, but she was already discovering it was nothing she couldn't handle, and though she was out of breath it was not by any means an unpleasant feeling; it was more like the way she always felt after a good two- or three-mile run. Even the pain seemed to have suddenly retreated to a distant buzz. She was up on her feet now and she felt more like herself again, more in control.

Cruz smiled and allowed herself a moment of private celebration. They couldn't beat her. They never _had_ been able to beat her, and it seemed they still couldn't, not even with things the way they were now. She _was_ going to succeed. Fuck you, Detective Brent Schaeffer.

She started for the door, bare feet padding silently on the floor.

The pain was sudden and tremendous. She came up short, almost toppling forward. She could feel the scream rushing up her throat this time, so she sank her teeth into her tongue again and what came out instead was a long, sighing moan. More blood squirted into her mouth, warm and salty, and that brought back the urge - the _need_ - to puke, and brought it back _hard_. She felt her knees beginning to buckle, and it was only by colossal effort of will - knowing she had started her gears turning and if they stopped now, they'd be stopping for good - that she managed to remain standing.

The sling, it seemed, wasn't enough - every step she took jolted the shattered ruin of her shoulder (_little bits of bone, screeching and grinding up against each other - oh, can't you just _see_ it?_). Cruz found herself able to do nothing but stand stock-still where she was, head still swimming with that last enormous jolt of pain, heart racing, eyes darting aimlessly and helplessly around the room. She felt sickeningly vulnerable, sickeningly _exposed_, and she felt the first sly threads of panic begin to tickle at the back of her mind. She couldn't move, and it was as much fear of pain that kept her in her place as it was the pain itself. She was effectively trapped - unable go forward, unable to go back. Frozen in place, like a kid playing Red Light.

_You moved too fast_, the Voice of Doubt said curtly, apparently deciding - at least for the moment - to offer advice instead of criticism. _You got up and tried to walk out of here like everything was perfectly all right. Like _you_ were all right. You're not. You're pretty far from all right. You keep forgetting that._

Cruz gulped (to anyone watching this would have been comic, almost theatrical) and took a ginger, hesitant step forward. It was okay. Another. And another. Baby steps. Jesus Christ, she was reduced to _baby steps_, shuffling along like an old woman.

_I just have to move carefully, that's all. And keep the left arm _completely_ immobile._

Cruz drew a deep, trembling breath and started forward again. _Carefully_. No problem. No problem at all.

_Don't get too comfortable yet. Take a look at yourself. Feel a draft? _

Yes, she was in a hospital gown. The clothes she'd been wearing when they brought her in were long gone, bagged as evidence. Which was beside the point; they would have been bloody, torn and worthless anyway. But again, it was no problem - there was a hospital bathrobe hanging on the door, and a pair of slippers under it. She would have to find something better at some point, but it was a start. The next phase of her plan was getting out of the hospital, probably through a side door, getting a fair distance away, and perhaps hailing a cab.

The Voice of Doubt spoke up again. _A cab. Right. What are you gonna pay him with, sweetie? More to the point, where are you gonna tell him to take you? _

Those were two bridges that she'd cross when she came to them. At the moment the only thought in her mind was _now_. _Later_ could wait.

She reached the door and turned the knob gently, slow and as quiet as she could manage, and opened it a crack. Taking another long, shaky breath, Cruz risked everything she had achieved to this point and looked out.

For a moment she thought could actually _see_ the rookie, complete with her stupid little don't-fuck-with-me hairdo, sitting in the chair next to the room, thumbing a magazine to pass the time.

It was, of course, pure nervous hallucination. The hall and the plastic waiting room chair were both empty. Cruz grunted a suppressed laugh. The cop was probably still in the cafeteria, one floor down, and not hurrying - after all, her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, was she?

Cruz took the robe off the door. She worked her right arm through the sleeve and draped it around her bad shoulder, then cinched it closed at the waist. She slid her feet into the slippers, then peeked out and checked once more for nurses, doctors, orderlies and the like.

Still all clear.

She slipped out of the room, quietly shut the door behind her, and walked lightly down the hall - still just a bit unsteady but doing better now. She glanced at doors as she passed, trying to think of places where she could find something decent to put on, preferably a coat. Shoes could wait - the slippers were light and flimsy but they'd do. She needed a coat. A _long_ coat. It was unseasonably cold out, and she hoped that gave her an advantage.

The hall here on the third floor was absolutely deserted. It wasn't just chow-time for pretty little rookies; everybody else seemed to have taken off, as well, including the duty nurse. That was good, but she had to get down to the first floor where there would be a lot more activity. It was possible - _very likely_ - that she'd run into someone who knew her, someone who knew why she was here. A doctor or nurse. Fields, maybe. Or Yolanda the she-bear. Maybe even Schaeffer's pet cop.

_It's not as if I'm gonna go staggering right through the middle of the fucking ER. Mercy's a big hospital. I just have to stick to the out-of-the-way places._

True, she could do that, but that didn't change the fact that every minute she was out of the room she became more vulnerable. She'd been incredibly lucky so far, and she'd actually been able to dominate the pain, but she still knew that it wouldn't - and couldn't - last. She had to move fast and think fast, and while those were two things she'd always been superb at, her head just wasn't in the condition for it right now. She could feel the walls closing in on her.

_Didn't think this through so well after all, did you, honey?_

Again she felt panic began to thicken in her chest, but she curbed it and shambled on, heading for the stairwell at the end of the hall.

The stairwell! There'd be an emergency exit on the first floor of the stairwell!

But that still left the issue of clothing. She would look too suspicious in just the robe.

_Oh, would you listen to yourself? Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Would you just _please_ give this up? It's just too much, too many obstacles stacked against you. Just face reality, Maritza - it's over. One way or another, it's over. Why are you trying to deny that simple fact? What are you trying to prove? _

Cruz reached the stairwell in two final lurching steps and slumped against the doorframe, realizing that she could at last put an actual face with the Voice of Doubt - it was her father. The Voice of Doubt was her father. Of _course _it was. The tone was badgering but there was nothing really mocking or contemptuous in it; it was just Jaime Cruz, just her Papa's soft, reasonable voice, telling her exactly what he would if he were here with her now.

Give up. Go back to her room. Surrender to the cop and face whatever was coming. It was really all there was, wasn't it?

And there was a part of her that _wanted_ to go back, back to her room and her bed. Or maybe just lie down here and wait for someone to find her. She had denied that part of her, she had buried it under a desperate refusal to submit, and so to escape it had simply taken on separate voice in her mind, whispering to her in the persona of her sweet, timid father, telling her to stop now, to let this all go. Don't worry, Maritza, it'll be all right. No matter what happens, it'll be all right. He had been the only person she had ever known who had been able to make her believe that. Always so placid, so reasonable, so soothing. The temptation to listen to it was almost overwhelming.

And she might have. She might have if this was just a simple matter of escape. But there was more at stake now, something that went beyond Schaeffer, beyond Yokas and Boscorelli and Noble and what had happened in his hotel room. There had been that growing doubt ever since Lettie's death, that sly, creeping suspicion that what she was doing was wholly inconsequential, that far from being the hero the badge was supposed to make her, she was just a small cog in a broken machine, perpetuating a pointless and endless cycle in a war that would never see any definitive end, no winners and no losers but only casualties. Everyone pays their part of the price at some point, right? Not a matter of _if_ but _when_. Consider what happened to Lettie. Consider the fact that so many of her old friends and schoolmates had fallen in much the same way - to gangs, to drugs, to the temptation to become part of the problem and _sell_ drugs. And always that accompanying sense of powerlessness; she had been able to do nothing, not as an individual, not as part of the whole. She had become a cop and she had tried, she had recited that tired old mantra to herself about how she was _making a difference_, knowing that she'd never be able to make so much as a _dent_. If Buford went down, another would take his place; perhaps _two_ would take his place. The war would rage on, endlessly. Pointlessly.

But she had always kept fighting it, and she would keep fighting it. She would keep fighting, and it wasn't even out of anything as rational as an _ideal_; she would keep fighting because it was too deeply instilled in her, the awful, bitter rage had become too much a part of who she was. It was a matter of hard-wiring. She would keep going as long as there was breath left in her. Whether she wanted to or not.

Her father would not have understood that. They had been very different people.

And besides which, he was dead.

She, on the other hand, was still alive. So far.

Cruz went down the stairs slowly, taking each step as it came - one foot at a time - holding tight to the bannister. Perhaps she would get lucky and fall. A broken neck would put a quick end to this insanity, wouldn't it?

But she didn't fall, and there was indeed an emergency exit on the ground floor of the stairwell. She fell against the crash-bar and shoved the door open with a pained grunt. And just like that she was out, out in the air.

The exit let her out into the hospital's rear parking lot. She began to walk, casting a doubtful glance overhead. The sky above was heavy with dark, evil-looking clouds, moving in fast.

And here she was, still in a hospital robe.

No matter. They would catch her soon anyway. Any minute now, they would catch her, and all of this would be brought to an end.

But she kept walking.

_Whatever happens, happens, _she thought dimly_. Whatever happens, happens._


	7. Chapter 5, Part II

Chapter 5 Continued

* * *

II.

The cab ride was bad.

She had no money, of course. She would have to go into her apartment, get money to pay the cabbie, and come back out. That meant time, effort, and more pain. But that wasn't what was bothering her at the moment. A new, much more troubling question had occurred to her, just after she'd gotten into the taxi.

Would her apartment still be there?

Or, to put it somewhat less dramatically, would the police have been there? Would they perhaps be there _right now?_ If IAB had been gunning for her, if it was as big as Schaeffer said it was, then surely they would have gotten a warrant for her apartment.

If they searched her apartment, she was finished for sure. There was a lot for them to find there. A _lot_.

Cruz put her head back against the seat, pulling the hospital robe more tightly around herself. The new questions just kept piling up, one on top of the other, and she was sick of dealing with each new problem as it presented itself. And yet there was almost a sense (and it was bittersweet, she had to admit) that the problems would take care of themselves; after leaving the hospital she had walked, and walked, and walked, every step of the way convinced that the next step would be the last. _Had_ to be the last. A woman shuffling along in a cream-colored hospital bathrobe and slippers, barely able to stay upright ... even in New York that was hard to ignore. Someone would take notice and become suspicious. At any moment someone would shout, the rookie cop would grab her from behind, someone would stop her and ask what was wrong. Something. Something to bring on the end, and then at last she would be able to lie down and sleep.

But she made it out of Mercy's parking lot and onto the street without meeting any resistance. By the time the rain started up she'd made it to the end of the block. No-one grabbed her. No-one shouted _stop that woman_. No-one took any notice of her at all. And yet her luck seemed to have run out all the same, because she had been unable to find a cab. By then she'd decided that flagging down a taxi probably _was_ the only logical conclusion to her fuzzy little escape plan ... but when the time came to put it into action there wasn't a taxi in sight. In _New York_. On a normal day you couldn't look around without seeing at least two, and the Mercy area certainly should have been crawling with them ... and yet Cruz still hadn't been able to see even _one_ of those distinctive canary-yellow paint-jobs. _Anywhere_.

In a way, she'd been relieved.

And then a cab had found _her_.

It was as if it had been sent by God. The taxi had pulled up short at the curb next to her with an alarming squeal of brakes and peeling rubber, the driver honking the horn at her in a jaunty little _shave-and-a-haircut_ rhythm. He'd just finished offloading a passenger at the hospital's rear entrance. On his way out, he'd caught sight of her, and decided that if anyone looked like they were in life-and-death need of a ride, it was her.

Her knight in shining yellow armor.

Now here she was, on her way home. On her way home and safe from the rain, which was now beating steadily against the windows and the roof of the car. The problems really did seem to be solving themselves, and it had all become so surreal now that part of her was almost tempted to believe it really was a dream, that she was still in her bed at Mercy, grinning in her sleep as she lived her impossible escape in her head. At the same time she was coming to believe that whatever had allowed her to get this far - luck, divine intervention, her will to survive, perhaps all three - could not be allowed to go to waste. She would keep going until someone or something stopped her. If Schaeffer's rats were at her apartment, then they were there and that was her fortune.

After all - whatever happened, happened.

Her serenity had returned, it seemed. Or maybe it was just exhaustion.

"Ain't this just a _shit_ of a day?" the cabbie said mildly.

Cruz winced and made no reply. He was her savior and she thanked God for him (at least, she _thought_ she did), but she was in no mood for New York Cabbie small-talk.

"Supposed to get this weather all week," he continued. "Ain't _that_ a bitch."

"Mmm-hmm."

"You really don't look so good," he said after a moment. "Don't sound so good, either. You sure you should be out of the hospital? Looks to me like you could use another couple of days. If you don't mind my saying."

"It's cool."

"Didn't have nobody to come pick you up?" Cruz looked up and saw him smiling in the rearview mirror. Her knight in shining yellow armor was fiftyish, heavyset, and looked like a hipster grandfather going for the ZZ Top look and not quite pulling it off. He had a thick silver-white beard that went halfway down his chest, and he was wearing a pair of slick wraparound sunglasses that probably cut his vision by about fifty percent in this weather. A baseball cap was perched ridiculously high on his head. "Pretty gal like you has gotta have a boyfriend at least, right?"

Cruz found the idea that she could appear _pretty_ in her current state mildly amusing. Then, for no reason at all, she thought of Boscorelli. The back-stabbing prick was the closest thing she'd had to a "boyfriend" in the past year, and her only lay in almost as long. That was pathetic as well as funny. "No," she said tightly. "Nobody."

"And they really just gave you that robe to wear outside? That's _all?_ On a day like this?"

"Yeah."

The cabbie whistled. "God-_damn!_ That's the state of the world today, isn't it? The state of _healthcare_. They don't give a shit about you. Don't give a shit about _people_. They just cut you loose and tell you not to let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Cruz smiled faintly. "Right."

"Me, I had a little accident with a bandsaw, about three years ago," He held up his right hand. The index finger was gone to the second knuckle. "So I know what you're talking about. I tell ya, I sat in the fuckin' ER for _two hours_, waiting. No word of a lie; _two - damned - hours_, bleeding like a stuck pig. They just don't give a rat's ass anymore!"

"They don't," Cruz rasped wearily, desperately wishing he'd shut up. There was a hot, rotten ache starting up between her temples. Her tongue, bitten twice and bitten hard, throbbed in time with it.

"So what'd you do?" the cabbie said. "I mean, what were you in for? If you don't mind telling me."

_(Give me the damned gun so I can get back to doing my job)_

"Broke my shoulder," Cruz murmured, and in her mind she saw it all again: Yokas holding out Noble's pistol, as if she was finally ready to be a good little girl and hand it over ... and then Yokas _reverses_ it, reverses it and then _shoots _her with it. She'd really done that, hadn't she? Right out of the blue, she'd made the last move Cruz would ever have expected her to make. She would have been less surprised if Bosco had shot her, but it had been Yokas. _Yokas_, who was always so fucking superior.

And they never even should have been there in that room. _Never_. That was the hell of it. They'd had no business being in that room, they'd had no _right_ to be in that room. _Neither_ of them. Boscorelli was bad enough, going all bleeding-heart over Nunez, _Nunez_ for Christ's sake, a fucking street skell who would probably finish up an irrelevant John Doe overdose within the next two years ... but then you had _Yokas_, that high-box bitch Yokas, sticking her nose into business that was none of her concern and way over her head anyway. And when Cruz comes in to try to put a stop to it, when Cruz issues a subordinate officer with a _direct order_, Yokas responds by trying to murder her.

Yokas had tried to _murder_ her.

It's a common assumption that people don't retain the details of any kind of violent trauma. _I remember everything until my car hit the guardrail - _that was how the story usually went. It was a defense mechanism. Some prissy little censor in the brain steps in and blocks the experience from repeating on the conscious mind. Cruz thought her censor must have fallen asleep at the switch, however, because the run of her memory went right past the shot itself. She remembered it all: the sledgehammer impact of the bullet, warm blood spattering against the side of her face - _her own blood_. Then the pain, the disbelief and fury that had set in immediately alongside something new and awful: a raw, animal terror, unlike anything she'd ever felt on the job before. Yokas was trying to kill her. Yokas was not trying to talk her way out of the room, she was not hiding behind Boscorelli or making hollow threats to arrest Noble or Cruz or both. Yokas was trying to _kill_ her.

But that wasn't even half of what had really terrified her. What had terrified her was not having picked up any warning signs beforehand. None whatsoever. Something had happened that she had not been able to anticipate, and the script had been rewritten out from under her. She had misjudged. She had miscalculated.

And she had lost control.

"Doing what?" the cabbie pressed.

Cruz didn't answer him. She squeezed her eyes closed, feeling hot tears slip down her cheeks, and in that moment, listening to the rain battering the roof of the car, she was suddenly overcome by the blackest despair she had ever known. The reality of where she was and what had happened to her - until now acknowledged only in the most detached, matter-of-fact way - suddenly crashed into perspective. It was truly gone. _All gone_. She hadn't just lost _control_ - it seemed that over the course of the last few months she had lost _everything_, beginning with Lettie and finishing up here. Lettie was dead, and now most of her own life had been blasted away as well, her career snatched out from under her, its every victory, every achievement erased. Her life was over. Her _life_.

And what little she had left would be spent crippled.

_Oh, God damn you, Yokas. God damn you forever. _

"You don't want to tell me, it's okay," the cabbie said mildly. His tone suggested he might like to hear it anyway.

"Football," Cruz said. It was the first thing that popped into her mind and it was ridiculous, but it was an answer and therefore apt to shut him up. She laughed thinly. Her abused and battered tongue now felt like it had swollen to roughly the size of a tennis ball (and had about the same texture), and it was adding a weird furriness to everything she said. It made her sound mildly drunk.

"Football!" the cabbie exclaimed, and chuckled. "Well, that's kinda neat. Women play all kinds of full-contact sports these days. To each their own is what I say. Here were are. Three-twelve, right?"

The car slowed and then settled over to the curb. Cruz opened her eyes and looked out the window, her heart speeding up, the melancholy dissolving instantly as her danger-sense kicked into gear. She would have time to dwell on her fate later. _Lots_ of it. Right now she was home ...

... and everything looked perfectly benign. No police cruisers, nothing that looked like an unmarked car. No activity around her building that might suggest a search was being conducted.

_Doesn't mean they weren't already here. Yesterday, maybe._

"That'll be five bucks even," the cabbie said. He turned and smiled at her around the attempted ZZ Top beard, sliding his shades down to the tip his nose in an exaggerated, wry gesture, as if checking her over. His breath was a hot mix of hotdogs and onions. "Guess what? I'm gonna cut you a break, 'cuz you're all banged up with only that shitty robe to keep the rain off you and nobody to call on. In fact, there's an umbrella under the back seat, just behind your legs there. You can have it, if you want. My good deed for the day."

Cruz smiled wanly. "Thanks. I'll have to go inside and get the money."

"Not going anywhere." The cabbie grinned again. "Hey, you be careful playing football from now on, hear?"

Cruz nodded absently and gingerly extracted herself from the back of the cab, ignoring the proffered umbrella. The rain immediately struck her in the face, cold and harsh.

Shivering, hair quickly becoming soaked into damp strings, she hobbled up the front steps of her building and pressed the buzzer for the superintendent's apartment. Here, it seemed, was another problem - she had no keys.

The super was Claudia Cortez, a stooped, wizened little woman of about seventy with very little English. She was a tough little nut, though, stronger than her years and her crooked posture would suggest and easily up to her job; she buzzed around the building with tireless efficiency, janitor, plumber and electrician all rolled into one little pulsing dynamo. Cruz had watched her fling bags of garbage twice her size around like pillows, and she could repair just about any household appliance in the time it would take most handymen to write up the bill.

Cruz also counted her as one of the few people she truly liked and respected; they went to the same church, and occasionally they would have tea together afterwards. Sometimes in her own apartment, but more often in Claudia's; Claudia liked playing hostess to her. It was the cop thing. Having a living, breathing hero eating and sleeping right above your head, a _tenant in your own building_ ... that, as Claudia often reminded her, was not something you took lightly. Cruz responded with just the right amount of surface modesty, but she had no qualms about accepting praise ... even if it was a bit on the exalted side. Why not? Claudia was a woman after her own heart. Hero-worship notwithstanding, they were equals, and during their little get-togethers Cruz knew she could sound much like an old woman herself; their discussions always had the morose, conclusive gloominess that seems to turn up most frequently in the elderly. How the whole world was going to hell head-first, and how they all had front-row seats right here in the neighborhood. Cruz shared stories of her experiences on the job (albeit with a few details prudently edited out), and she knew it was not just simple, vapid politeness when Claudia nodded her head and agreed. Claudia _understood_. That was what Cruz enjoyed about her company. She had found someone, someone _outside_ the job, who understood.

But Claudia backed up her cynicism with a wry, witty humor that Cruz couldn't touch, and though she saw Cruz as both a hero and a live-in security measure, it didn't stop her from periodically trying to convince her to quit the NYPD, find a nice man with a good job, and start cranking out kids. She was a product of her generation that way, and she didn't want to see Cruz get hurt. And she was a woman of immeasurable kindness and generosity; it was Claudia who had helped make Lettie's funeral arrangements, Claudia who had gone with her to the service (just to swell the number of mourners from a pitiful two to a slightly less pitiful three - the third had been Boscorelli, looking pinched and uncomfortable throughout the entire service), Claudia who had offered a shoulder for her to cry on afterwards.

Cruz suddenly felt ashamed. Just by being here, she was getting Claudia involved in her mess.

And what was she going to think? There was _another _question. What was Claudia going to think when the whole story came out in the wash?

_Maybe it already has. _

Cruz felt her stomach tighten. It was a distinct possibility, wasn't it? The Melrose shootout would have made the news. Anti-Crime's takedown, on the other hand ... she supposed that depended on how quick on the draw the Department's PR people were. They'd do their damndest to keep a lid on as much of it as possible, but there was the Schaeffer factor to consider. From the way he'd treated her in the hospital - the snide little jokes, the sarcastic remarks, his assertion that she should have been flash-fried instead of the firefighter - the detective struck her as a man who ached for the spotlight. She wouldn't put it past him to leak the story himself. He'd probably see it as a necessary evil, bad publicity to force changes in policy. He was too much like Noble that way.

She thought of the cabbie. The cabbie with the waterfall of funky-grandpa beard hanging from his face, tipping his shades down low on his nose and peering over them, as if to get a better look at the overall package (such as it was). But maybe it wasn't her rack he was looking at. Maybe he was just playing it cool, confirming to himself that yes, he did indeed have one slightly battered, thoroughly exhausted, and now very _famous _ex-cop in the back seat of his cab. He might call the police as soon as he left. Might be doing it right now, at that.

Cruz cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder. Through the rain the cab wasn't much more than a yellow blur, and she couldn't make out even the vaguest hint of the man behind the wheel. He was still down there, waiting for his five bucks ... but what was he _doing_ down there?

And how was Claudia going to react? If she'd seen something, if she'd heard something, how would she react?

There wasn't much to do about it now - the buzzer was on its second ring. Halfway through the third there was a click.

Then Claudia's voice, in polite, clipped Spanish: "Yes? Who is it?"

Cruz croaked her name into the intercom, leaning her good shoulder against the door and closing her eyes against her headache, which seemed to be worsening incrementally by the second. She added, in Spanish: "I'm sorry, I don't have my key."

No reply. Just another click as Claudia hung up the phone.

Cruz was left waiting in the rain, nonplussed. Was she coming to let her in or not? Had they been cut off? Some fault in the intercom?

Or was Claudia already back on the horn? This time with the cops. Get her a dispatcher who could speak Spanish and she'd be off to the races - _Hello, police? About that corrupt sergeant ... yes, the one on the news ... well, she's a tenant in my building ... and it seems she just showed up at my door._

Would Claudia do that? Would she really?

Cruz didn't know.

Twenty seconds rolled by. Felt more like sixty. Cruz rocked from one foot to the other as the rain hammered at her. She was about to reach for the buzzer again when she heard a door open somewhere inside. There was a sound that might have been approaching footsteps and then there was Claudia, her face floating uncertainly behind the little safety-meshed window in the door. But she wasn't making any move to open up; apparently she wasn't quite sure if the woman on the other end of the intercom really was who she said she was. Cruz could see her squinting distrustfully out through the rain, and it was another heartbeat or two of standing in the downpour before recognition finally flashed.

Recognition that quickly turned to shock.

"Maritza!" Claudia exclaimed, throwing the door open and beckoning the soaked, bedraggled and shivering Cruz into the hall. "My God, what happened to you?"

"That is a _very_ long story," Cruz said faintly, again responding in Spanish, the language feeling strangely alien and unfamiliar in her mouth. She shuffled past Claudia and into the hall, a little surprised at how enormously grateful she felt just to be out of the rain again. It was warm in here. Warm and familiar. The super's apartment was located just inside and to the left of the little foyer that served as the building's lobby; Cruz could hear the reedy, hopelessly dated theme-music of _The Price is Right, _that immortal staple of daytime viewing, coming from inside.

Claudia had just been sitting down to lunch, then. Claudia had gotten out of bed this morning expecting a routine day, start to finish, no more and no less. She had not expected Maritza Cruz to come dragging up to her door looking like six kinds of death.

Cruz heard the doors close behind her and turned.

The initial shock seemed to have worn off - the little woman was now looking at her with an expression that was close to outright horror.

"Maritza?" Claudia repeated softly. Her eyes were as big as saucers. "Are you hurt? You look hurt ... my _God_ ..."

"No ... yes." Cruz shook her head to clear it. It didn't work. Just made things feel worse. "I just ... I just got out of the hospital ..."

"What's wrong with your arm?" The old woman stepped forward and reached for her. "Why do you stand like that? Maritza, please tell me what happ - "

"I'm all right," Cruz cut her off, flinching away from the touch. "It's just ... I ... I don't have my keys ..."

"I'll get you mine," Claudia said immediately, and retreated into her apartment. Cruz stood in the doorway, brushing her dripping hair out of her eyes and trying to control the shivering. She was freezing, and that was no surprise considering she was one thin bathrobe and a soaked hospital gown away from naked, but it seemed to have deepened into a heavy, unsettling cold that went all the way to the center of her body. She was shivering like a wet puppy and she couldn't stop. And her head still hurt. Her head still hurt, her tongue still hurt, and now her shoulder was coming alive again - the pain seemed to come and go in long, sweeping arcs.

"You can get it back to me whenever you feel up to it," the old woman said when she reappeared with the key. Then she paused. Horror seemed to have become a stout kind of worry; Claudia was now eyeing her with the shrewd concern of a mother. "It was that job of yours."

It wasn't a question. It was, in fact, almost an accusation. Cruz only nodded, turning the key over in her hand, staring down at it without seeing it. There was still the heady sense that all of this was make-believe, just some morphine-induced dream enjoyed from the comfortable prison of her hospital bed.

"Oh, Maritza, I wish you'd quit that job! I know you mean well, and I thank you for what you do, but I worry about you so much! Please, come in for some tea."

"No," Cruz said hastily. She seemed unable to raise her head to meet Claudia's eyes, her gaze still rooted to the key. "No, really, thank you anyway, but I really need to get upstairs and lie down. It's ... it's been a bad week." She blinked at that, then uttered an odd, barking little laugh. _Bad week._ Came from the same place as telling the cabbie she'd broken her shoulder playing _football_. As good a way as any to describe the complete ruin of your life. _Bad week._

"Of course," Claudia said, still giving her the long-suffering mom look. Then, before Cruz had time to react, her hand came out and snagged a swatch of bathrobe. She pinched the flimsy and sopping wet material between her thumb and forefinger and shook it gently. "Look at this," the old woman said disdainfully. "_Look_. This is how they send you out into the world, is it?" She let go of the robe, shaking her head, and now it almost looked like she was going to cry. "I'm so sorry, Maritza. You deserve so much better than this."

Claudia moved forward abruptly, arms open, ready to embrace.

Cruz shrank away. "No ... please ... I can't ..." Her voice had become thick and clotted, and it was no longer just because of her tongue - she was very near tears now herself. _For_ herself, and for this innocent kindness. Claudia didn't know. Claudia had no idea that she was standing here next to a fugitive. Beyond her daily half-hour visits with Bob Barker, Cruz didn't think the little woman watched much television anyway. Too depressing. Even the professional cynics have to take a break once in a while.

She wondered if Claudia would still treat her like this if she knew. If she knew the truth. Cruz wanted to say something to her, but she was afraid to. She knew that in all likelihood she would never see Claudia Cortez again and she wanted to say something, she wanted to tell Claudia that she never meant for her to be touched by this, hurt by it, that she thanked her for all the afternoons they'd spent together, that she thanked her for helping her with Lettie's funeral, for helping her through what came after, that she was the closest thing she had in her life to a friend and that she never meant for her to be hurt by this.

But all she could manage was: "My shoulder ... it's my shoulder ... I hurt my shoulder ... "

Claudia nodded and stepped back, looking a bit sheepish. "Oh! Oh, of course, I'm sorry ... If there's anything I can do to help ..."

_The cab._

"My taxi's waiting outside," Cruz said, wanting only to be away from here, wanting none of this to have ever happened, wanting none of it to _be_ happening. "He wants five dollars. I'll pay you back if you could ..."

"Absolutely!" Claudia said immediately. "Now get yourself to bed, get a hot water bottle in there with you - you'll catch your death if you stand here like this much longer. And _please_, Maritza, think about what I said, eh?"

The old woman smiled innocently. "No job is worth this kind of pain."


	8. Chapter 5, Part III

Chapter 5 Continued

III.

She found her apartment just as she'd left it, and there was never any reason to believe otherwise. The police hadn't been here at all.

She got the door closed behind her, wove a staggering, drunken path across the room, and collapsed into the first chair she came to. Her head was pounding, her tongue was throbbing, her shoulder was molten fire, and the only emotion left in her was a curdled mix of rage, misery, self-hatred, self-pity, and desperate confusion. The room spun crazily around her, and she was trembling so badly that it felt as if at any moment she would simply fly apart.

And through it all, her mind was screeching the same pointless idiot litany over and over; _how_ had this happened, _how_ had she gotten here, _how_ could things change so quickly, so completely? At the beginning of the week (_a bad week_) she had been Sergeant Maritza Cruz, Anti-Crime, badge number 02334. Aaron Noble had been securely wedged under her thumb. She had been on the path to avenging Lettie and ridding the world of Rick Buford forever. Boscorelli had been both her star and her safety net. Everything had been under control.

_Under control? _a voice sneered somewhere from the deepening mire of delirium - not her father this time but rather something she thought might be the last remnant of the Anti-Crime Sergeant. _Are you serious? Noble was a pigheaded junkie who almost blew a sting by snorting meth along with the suspects. Then he goes and shoots one of them and makes a complete balls-up of everything you'd worked so hard to set in motion. And Boscorelli ... the whole time Boscorelli was growing himself a nice little conscience, wasn't he? And you never saw any of it. It was all coming apart at the seams long before Yokas put that bullet in you, long before you ever set foot in that hotel room, and you never fucking saw _any_ of it coming. _

"Stop it," she croaked aloud, and the voice in her head immediately went silent. What shut it up was mostly shock - shock at the strangled little moan that she heard issue from her own throat. She had to keep it together. She was losing her grip. She had to focus.

Focus.

_Focus._

Her heart was running wild again, and the room was still spinning. Cruz leaned forward in the chair and clutched herself around her middle with her good arm, squeezing her eyes closed. That took care of the dizziness, but she couldn't get a handle on the shivering - just _couldn't_. She couldn't get _warm_. Her teeth clacked in her head, audibly and almost ridiculously; a child's pantomime of extreme fear. And the thudding between her temples had taken on a jagged, grating quality, like someone hitting a sack full of sheet metal with an iron bar.

Focus.

_It's over_, her Papa said soothingly, and she could almost feel him stroking her hair as he said it, the way he would when she was very small, always starting at the crown and running his fingers through it all the way down to where it stopped at her shoulder blades._ It's all over. You hit the wall. You said you'd keep going until you hit the wall. And here you are._

No. Focus.

_This is how it ends, Maritza. This is where you finish up._

No. _No_. This was _not_ where she was going to finish up, oh _no_ sir, not curled up dead of exhaustion or exposure on the floor of her own apartment, it was not going to end like _that_, not after everything she'd gone through today, not after everything she'd ever fucking gone through. Not after Boscorelli and Yokas and Schaeffer and what they'd done to her. Not after Richard Buford, not after he'd slithered through her fingers when she'd been so close to him, not while he was still walking around a free man.

_Here we are. Buford again. Always Buford. Always back to Buford._

Yes. Back to Buford.

Cruz brought his face into sharp focus in her mind. She had never actually _seen_ Richard Buford's face - she had gotten only a brief glimpse of an indistinct sillouette through the window of his car - but she could see his face all the same. In her mind Buford had become a kind of amalgam built out of the people associated with him - a touch of Willie Griffin, a heavy dose of Aaron Noble, and a generous helping of Gary "Animal" Barnes, the dealer who sold Lettie her last hit and the man who blew up the meth lab where Lettie died. When it came right down to it, Barnes was probably a lot more responsible for Lettie's death than Buford, but that hardly mattered to Cruz. Barnes was nothing. Barnes was just an appendage - Buford was the source. You could almost say Buford _was_ Barnes - he was Barnes and he was every other Disciple and he was every other drug dealer she'd ever locked up or would ever lock up.

Buford was her purpose now. Barnes didn't matter. Schaeffer didn't matter. Yokas and Boscorelli didn't matter. There was only Buford, she hadn't forgotten him, and she wasn't about to, either. Why else had she done this, why else had she pushed herself so far and so hard? Escape didn't matter to her. Merely being _free_ didn't matter to her. Why should it? What did she have left? Nothing. Absolutely fuck-all _nothing_. _Nada_, to use her hereditary tongue. She had no intention of trying to hide, of trying to _go_ _underground_ like a character in a bad spy movie. No new identities or plastic surgery or any of that kind of dreck. No slinking away in defeat. There were loose ends that needed tying up, and she was the one who had to see it through.

_Focus._

Still holding herself around her midsection, Cruz began to rock gently in the chair, back and forth, forcing her breathing into a slow, even rhythm. The only sound in the apartment was the soft patter of rain against the window. Her mind seized on it, concentrating on that sound and that alone, clearing her mind. She rocked, forward, backward, in time with each breath.

_Focus_, yes. She would focus. She would savor the pain. She would keep savoring the pain. She would wrap her legs around the pain and she would _fuck_ it. Cruz smiled at this crude little metaphor and snorted soft, huffing laughter ... then quickly admonished herself to keep her mind clear. To keep it _focused_. That was always what she'd told Boscorelli, wasn't it? _Focus, Bosco_. That was what she always told any partner or underling whenever they started getting all jittery and weak-sister on her. _Focus_. Cut through the chaff and make yourself see what was really important.

High time she started living by her own advice.

She breathed.

Rocked.

Breathed.

Rocked.

They couldn't beat her. They had tried and tried, they had started right from the Academy, but they could never beat her, and they still couldn't.

She breathed.

Five minutes went by. Five minutes became ten. Ten became fifteen. The shivering lessened, then trailed off into nothing. The storm in her head started to gradually subside. And she was starting to warm up.

She opened her eyes and looked around at where she'd ended up.

Home.

She was _home_. Her eyes traced the lines of the apartment, marking it all, again marvelling at how untouched everything was. She had moved here four years ago, and in the time since she thought she had done a good job of making the place her own; the result was simple and cozy and, in her own secret opinion, tastefully feminine. The furniture was sparse and functional without looking too bleak, the lighting soft and warm and earthy. A faux-fireplace dominated the west corner of the living room, its mantle lined with framed photographs. Next to that was her stereo rig, a decent little setup with a five-disc CD changer. It was here that she spent most of her idle moments; she had about as much interest in television as Claudia, preferring to sit in her low-slung (and deceptively uncomfortable-looking) canvas chair with her headphones on, letting the changer run methodically from one disc to the next, letting the hours melt away and the apartment grow dark around her.

She also had an impressive collection of paintings; they hung on just about every wall, from hall to living room to kitchen. They were mostly cheap dollar-store stuff, perhaps not art, but they were tasteful and unpretentious and she enjoyed them. Most were landscapes. Beaches. She liked beaches. Not the man-made variety, but rather the rough, chaotic edges of natural inlets and coves; waves crashing against rocks at the foot of towering cliffs, with perhaps a sea-bird or two for a sense of scale. Remote places, places where nothing could be seen of human encroachment or human invention. Places where you could go and find not so much as a bottle cap. Cruz knew that most people would see absolutely nothing profound in that, but she did - a dyed-in-the-wool city-girl, she had been fascinated by such scenes since she was a small child.

The photographs on the mantle, however, were slightly less fanciful, and it was hardly surprising that most were of her sister. After Lettie's death Cruz had taken out and framed a number of childhood photos, all carefully selected to reflect only the best times (fictional as they often seemed to her now). Lettie in her First Communion dress; Lettie proudly showing off the gap where her first lost baby-tooth had resided; an adolescent Maritza reading to her from a tattered and much-loved book as the two of them sat on Lettie's bed. The book was probably something by Dr. Seuss; _Cat in the Hat_ or _Hop on Pop_ or maybe Lettie's all-time favorite, _Green Eggs 'n Ham_. Their father had been adamant that his daughters be fluent in both English and Spanish, but Lettie had been slow to warm to English. Maritza, in a burst of inspiration, had gone to the library and loaded up on the good doctor's works, believing the bubbly sing-song rhythmns and rhymes would spark Lettie's interest in the language. And she had been right - Lettie had devoured the books with her usual rabid enthusiasm.

At first, Cruz's reasons for putting these pictures of happier days on display had been no less than a sullen attempt at self-torture; every time she passed through the room she would have to see them, she would have to see and she would have to _remember_. The mistakes that were made. The opportunities that were missed. What she might have done differently to set Lettie on a different path. Apparently losing sleep over these things had not been enough for her - she had felt the need to grind some fresh salt into the wounds in her waking hours as well.

But it had backfired, and quite neatly at that - Cruz discovered that she could look at the photos exactly the way one is supposed to see such things, with sadness but also with real pleasure, almost as if she were trying to spite herself and her mawkish need to indulge her own guilt. Because this place was her safety net. She didn't come here to brood - she came here to escape from the job and, to a certain extent, from her own self. Despite a succession of transitory lovers she'd had over the years (and the occassional visit from Claudia), Cruz was at heart a solitary person and her pleasures were solitary, enjoyed in private, almost in _secret_, as if her identity outside of her work was something to be held close to her chest, protected.

She cooked, using recipes her mother had passed down to her. (Her mother, God rest her, had believed they would be put to good use when Maritza married and settled down to raise a brood.) She was a mediocre chef, but she indulged herself happily and rarely cooked for anyone else. She liked to sing - she was marginally aware that she possessed a remarkable voice - but never did so unless the apartment was empty. Her pleasures were hers and hers alone, and even during the times when she had a man in her bed she could be intensely private; when Bosco had gone snooping through her things looking for Noble's notebook, she had been ready to cut all ties with him right then and there. And she would have, even if none of what followed ever happened.

This was _her_ place.

Now, though, the warm familiarity of the apartment only conflicted with the reality of her situation in a way that felt decidedly bizarre; in a weird way it was like sitting in her own tomb. Her life was over ... and yet here she was, home sweet home. So strange. Such a strange progression. First the street outside the hospital, dragging herself along, expecting to be stopped at any moment. Then the cab. Then here. There had been no thought at all - she'd gotten into the taxi and promptly given the cabbie her address. Cruz supposed it was an instinct as old as humanity itself; when you were hurt, you crawled back home to lick your wounds.

_Or die._

Or die, yes.

But that wasn't going to happen. Not yet.

She had to resume the chase, pick up right where she'd left off. Right where she'd been _cut_ off. The bitch Yokas and the back-stabbing _cabron_ Boscorelli and the rat-bastard Schaeffer had put her in this place, but they were no longer what was important. The _chase_ was important. Going after Buford. And that was exactly what she was going to do. Rick Buford was still a dead man walking.

Cruz waited for her father to offer an opinion on the matter. But Papa, it seemed, was staying quiet on this one. Because _it could be done_. And the reason it could be done was simple: for all that had changed in the past week, there was one thing that remained constant - that famed and acclaimed wordsmith, Aaron Noble. Aaron Noble, who was quite possibly one of about ten people in the entire country who knew where Buford was. Or at least knew how to find him.

Long shot, yes. Very long shot. But if she had any reasonable hope left of picking up Buford's trail, it would be through the writer. She believed it could be done. _Theoretically_. If what Schaeffer had said was true - and it probably was - Noble would be out of jail, and he would probably still be in the city. They'd want him to stick around, and Noble would be more than happy to oblige, if only for the pleasure of testifying against her. He'd be in New York, and Cruz had made it a point to learn everything about him, including his favorite haunts and habits. So _theoretically_, she could find him. And _theoretically_, she could force him to lead her to Buford.

At this the Voice of Doubt spoke up.

_You're talking nonsense again, Maritza. This is _all_ nonsense. Buford's in the wind. He spent years dodging the FBI; the idea of a one-armed woman with a grudge tracking him down is beyond the ridiculous - to think in such a way is _lunacy_. He's gone, out of your reach forever. Probably back in Los Angeles or even further away. And Noble ... Noble would be no help to you anyway - the Disciples want him dead._

That was true, but Noble wouldn't _stay_ on the outs with Buford's boys. His new book was supposed to have an _entire chapter_ on Buford, and Noble wasn't the type to let a tasty journalistic morsel like that go to waste. He would weasel his way back into their good graces to save his goddam book. She was sure of it.

Gathering herself, Cruz tried to stand up. It took two tries before she succeeded, but once she was up on her feet she found she was much steadier now than she'd been when she came in. Smiling, she tottered into her bedroom.

Again there wasn't a hair out of place, and again she was struck by that eerie sense of disassociation, of walking through the empty and defunct museum of her own life. A tomb, yes, that was definitely the vibe here. One of those archaeological digs you sometimes read about where everything was frozen in one eternal moment by some unthinkable catastrophe. The New York Yankees T-shirt she had worn to bed the last night she slept here was still draped over the top of the clothes hamper in the corner. The bed itself had been left unmade, the sheets twisted and kicked around, as if her last night here was unsettled and fitful. Which, of course, it was.

It occurred to her now that Boscorelli had never noticed her insomnia. Or if he had, he had never shown any interest in learning the reasons behind it. Not exactly a communicative and sensitive man of the Twenty-First Century, was Maurice Boscorelli. Not surprising. Not that she cared. For Boscorelli it had been all about the fucking, and in the end that was about all he'd turned out to be good for. There might even be some trace of him still on the sheets - the bed had not been changed since he'd last shared it with her.

Cruz gave it a wide berth.

In the living room the run of her thoughts had taken an undeniable turn for the sentimental; she would never again cook here, never again sit in the low canvas chair with the headphones feeding her a constant and random stream of music, never again take tea with Claudia in her kitchen. Never do this, never do that, blah blah blah, oh how sad. Once in her bedroom, though, Cruz came back to herself, and she could think only of what was hidden here, all those dark little souvenirs of her past, her _legacy_, tucked away and waiting to be uncovered by the police. Boscorelli had missed it all when he'd gone snooping through the apartment, but Boscorelli had been in a hurry and focused only on Noble's notebook.

When the cops came, they'd open the place up throat-to-gizzard. And they'd find _everything_.

There was the dope - that alone could put her away for a good many years. It was hidden away in the closet, buried deep in an old Nike shoebox under a pile of old clothes. Just another tool of the trade. That was how she'd always viewed it - just a tool, no different than a gun or nightstick or handcuffs. But more civilized. More _subtle_. It was the ultimate velvet glove - in one little dimebag you had the power to intimidate and frighten, with no need for violence or even the threat of violence. You waved the drugs under the nose of an uncooperative skell and then made a few innocent comments about how much time a possession charge might land them. It was a harmless and very effective technique, and a friendly little reminder of exactly who was in charge.

Because she _never_ bluffed. And word got around fast.

There were also certain rare occasions where she would use the drugs more directly, as a bribe or as a reward, and that created a need for variety in her selection. Hence the shoebox. Some of the stash had been very carefully stolen from the Five-Five's evidence lockers, but most of it had been acquired right out on the streets - ecstacy, cocaine, crack, heroin, pot ... and of course that perennial favorite of junkie crime writers everywhere, crystal meth. Two-Bags' Traveling Pharmacy - a little something for every taste.

Schaeffer, she reflected grimly, was probably going to cream his skivvies over it. For reasons Cruz couldn't even begin to guess at (or care about), the detective seemed to harbor a very personal hatred for her, and while he may have taken down her entire team, she was definitely his prize goose. She would always be the center of attention; Schaeffer, who was not at all like the IAB goons she was accustomed to, would make sure of it. He would go where the microphones were and he would sensationalize her, much in the way Noble sensationalized _his_ subject matter. See Cruz! See what she was, the way she worked, the things she did - trampling all over people's civil rights, handing out drugs like candy to keep her informants in line ... and with her own sister an addict. _Tsk tsk_.

Oh, and the good citizens of New York would be _horrified_! John Q. Public would never understand the _necessity_ of the methods she'd used, the essential _rightness_ of them. John Q. never did. John Q. wanted everything to be clean and aboveboard and comfortably ordered, and if you tried to explain that the world just isn't like that, John Q. covered his ears and refused to listen. Schaeffer would capitalize on that, villify her, make her into the monster, paint her as the out-of-control vigilante cop. He might even suggest that she dipped into her own supply.

That thought shocked her in a way she would not have expected. Somehow, the idea that people would think she _used_ the dope was worse than the trouble she'd be in if it was found. _Vigilante cop with a drug habit_ - that's how it would read. An affront to all that she fought for. All that she _stood_ for.

_Oh, give the martyr act a rest, Maritza._ _Since when do you care what people think of you? None of it matters anymore. _None_ of it. You're finished however this turns out, so quit posturing._

But it _did_ matter. It mattered because she _had_ fought, she had fought it the way it was supposed to be fought, like a war, goddam it, and it _was_ a war. It _was_. It was a war and she was - she _still_ was - a soldier. In war you paid lip-service to the rules (rules made by sheltered bureaucrats with no conception of how the world really worked) and then you went right ahead and did what needed to be done. It was one of the simple, savage truths of the human experience that nobody ever wanted to face.

_Like Gaines and Alvarez. _

Cruz smiled uneasily to herself. Like Gaines and Alvarez, yes. Like the _guns_. If Friend Schaeffer saw the cache of illegal narcotics as a sweet moral victory, then the guns would probably give him a fucking coronary (and that, at least, was a happy thought, wasn't it?). Cruz had kept them after their dirty work was done, and she still had them. Two handguns, a snub-nosed .32 revolver and a .25 automatic. Both kept in the oak chest at the foot of her bed. Neither had serial numbers, but it was not the illegality of the guns that made them dangerous to her. It was how they'd been used.

Gaines and Alvarez. Had a kind of ring to it, didn't it? _Gaines n' Alvarez_. Like a singing duo or a pair of comedians. You could almost say the three words fast, as a singular name; the two men hadn't even known each other and yet they were inseperable now, now and _forever_, a single unit in Maritza Cruz's mind - _Gaines-and-Alvarez_. In a perverse way she supposed each of the two guns could bear the name of the man whose life it had taken. Gaines was the .25. Early 2001, that had been. Alvarez was the .32 ... that had been in mid-2002. Over a year apart, you had two men who didn't even know each other, never even met, both shot in the back of the head by the same cop.

Executed by the same cop.

_Executed. _

She had taken no pleasure in what she'd done, but she harbored no regret, either. It was necessary. In both cases, killing had been the only option left open to her. Though the circumstances in each case had differed greatly, Gaines and Alvarez had both become dangerous to her - to her, and in the case of Gaines, to members of her team. Killing had been the only option. She was still convinced of that. Again - it was _war_, and in war you did things you weren't proud of ... but you weren't ashamed of them, either. In the big picture Gaines and Alvarez were nothing, neither man worth the paper his death certificate was printed on. People get ground up in the machinery whether they deserve it or not. Like Stevie Nunez. Like Noble. Like Willie G. Hell, like the dead paramedic and the torched firefighter. Like her fucking _sister_.

How could she explain these things to people? How could she make them listen, make them _see_?

The answer was simple: she couldn't. And she knew it. She'd _always_ known it.

And she could see it now, she could see _exactly_ how it was going to be. She could see the trial. There would be a heavy theme of irony- she would be paraded around in a prison coverall like any of the dozens of jagoffs she'd put away herself. Cruz the murderer, Cruz the drug dealer (and possible addict), Cruz who sent innocents to prison, who doctored reports and fabricated or coerced confessions, Cruz who planted evidence and helped cover up acts of corruption committed by other cops.

And through it all she would be surrounded by lawyers. _Defense attorneys_. People she despised almost as much as those they defended - and _she_ would be depending on _them_. Defense attorneys whispering advice in her ear - don't say this, don't say that. Keep your mouth shut about things like "the Nature of War" and "Greater Good" and "Collateral Damage" and make it look like you're full of remorse, even if you aren't. _Especially _if you aren't. Play the court, the judge, the jury. Remind them of all the good - the _genuine _good - you did as a cop, the commendations and the medals and the meritorious promotion to sergeant. Play up your Catholicism - say you've re-connected with God, and say it was getting shot that did the trick. Bring rosary beads to court and pick at them (doing the best you can with one hand, of course, haha) and murmur prayers under your breath ... but for God's sake, keep it subtle. Cry frequently, but don't ham it up- no honking into handkerchiefs and no hair-pulling fits. Say you're sorry with humble dignity.

Not that any of that would matter. They would convict her. Sentence her. Send her to Riker's, where she would almost certainly be murdered. Might take weeks, months, even years to happen, but it would happen; Cruz didn't kid herself that prison was any different for female cops than it was for the guys, and she had a lot of enemies in Women's Correctional. Women she'd put there herself, relatives of men she'd put away, relatives of men she'd _shot_. They'd all be after her, and when it came it would come in some perfectly hokey prison-movie way - a homemade shiv driven into her kidneys or her guts or maybe drawn across her throat; a sheet tied around her neck for that old standby, the faked suicide; or just a good ol' fashioned beat-down, her skull caved in with the nearest handy blunt object. And that, she knew, was the optimistic outlook. More likely it would be a long, agonizing and humiliating affair - the lovely ladies of Riker's did not shy away from torture. Sexual assault and/or mutilation, cutting, burning, and even the pulling of fingernails were all things Cruz had heard tales of. Hokey prison-movie stuff ... but it _did_ happen. And it _would_ happen.

Over the years she had always been very aware of the dangerous game she played, walking a tightrope between what was legal and what was illegal ... which, coincidentally, was often the same line between what was legal and what was _right_. Cruz supposed she had what Noble called _Blue Line Fever_. She'd always known that what she was into was serious business, that the things she did were technically _criminal offenses_, and that disgrace followed by prison was always a very possible outcome. But that knowledge had been safely tucked away on a shelf in her mind, acknowledged and then immediately dismissed; she had _known_ that it would never happen, that she would always be one step ahead in the game. She had _known_ it, the same way you can _know_ that planes crash and yet still _know_ that you can keep getting on board and arrive safely at your destination, every single time, no fuss and no muss.

And yet planes _do _crash, don't they? Planes crash and sometimes one mistake is all it takes to hang yourself. Cruz supposed she should have known that. After all, she had watched it happen before.

She had watched it happen to Johnny.

Cruz shook her head. Now it was all coming back up on her, wasn't it? Sure, why not, toss a stick of TNT into the lake and lets just see how many corpses we can get to float up to the surface. First Gaines and Alvarez and the guns (only the guns _were_ Gaines and Alvarez - the idea of naming them after their victims really seemed to stick with her), and now Johnny. Johnny Hoyle. How long had it been since she'd last thought about Johnny? How long had it been since she had last _allowed_ herself to think about him? And here was the kicker - why hadn't she thought of him before now? Johnny had been here, right _here_, backed into the very same corner she now found herself in. Only Johnny had gone that extra step and killed himself rather than face the disgrace and humiliation of prison.

She hadn't forgotten him. And she sure as hell hadn't forgotten the name of that fucking punk rookie who started the whole thing. _Hart_. J.D. Hart. Johnny and a few other cops in their circle had been pocketing drug money, and Hart had taken it upon himself to sell them all out. IAB pounced on it, and with their typical pigheaded zeal, they'd viewed it as the crime of the century. By the time they were finished Cruz had lost her entire team and Hart had sauntered away from the Department without ever seeing the inside of a jail cell. Johnny, meanwhile, plopped down on his couch in front of his TV with his Glock in his hand, and turned his stereo up to an ear-splitting volume to cover the gunshot.

She was closer to Johnny now than she'd ever been when he was alive. And she _had_ been close to him, closer than she'd ever been with any other partner, maybe even any other _man_, even Ramon Valenzuela. Johnny had been a lean, handsome guy with a kind of easy nonchalance that never came across as cocky; with him you never got any of that tiresome adolescent chest-beating she was so used to seeing in her male colleagues (Bosco, to fall back on an old example). He was a clown, though, witty in his own way but often teetering on the brink of irritating, and one of his worst habits was what Cruz had come to call the Drum Solos. Johnny had been a compulsive finger-tapper, always hammering out intricate little rhythms with his fingertips, using just about anything he happened to be near as an instrument - the steering wheel of a car, his desk, parts of his own body. His favorite musician and all-time hero was Lenny Kravitz; Johnny would often claim (half-seriously) that Kravitz channeled the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. Cruz remembered what it could be like sitting in an RMP with him, on stakeout or just on a 10-63, listening to him finger-tap _Are You Gonna Go My Way_ on his thighs while he sang along under his breath. Usually while she kept telling him to fucking _stop_ it before she got a baseball bat and played her own Drum Solo on his head.

But she had come to respect him, admire him (though secretly - admiration was always something she played very close to her chest), and it was not much of a surprise when they ended up in bed together. It was not unusual for her to take her male partners home with her, although mostly (and there was no point dressing this up) it was just to scratch the occassional itch; sex was the same as playing a friendly game of tennis after a hard day's work. Johnny, though ... something else had happened with Johnny. Something else _entirely_. He had treated her differently. He had treated her differently because Johnny had _viewed_ her differently. To him she was never Two-Bags Cruz or Sergeant Cruz (or _That Crazy Bitch_, as she was known in some circles) - she was always just _'Ritza_. 'Ritza, his partner and his buddy and his equal. She didn't think he had ever actually _loved_ her, but ... but she had loved him. No point dressing that up, either. She thought she had, yes. A little, anyway.

And they destroyed him. They destroyed him over _money_. Johnny had been a good cop, he'd had a superb arrest record and numerous citations, he had saved her life not once but twice, in two separate gun battles, and yet they destroyed him over _money_. It was always the same, wasn't it? The good are thrown to the wolves while rats like J.D. Hart walk away with a slap on the wrist and a pat on the back.

Her father chose that moment to break in, again sounding as he always did, as he always _had_: so cool, so reasonable, so maddeningly _sensible_. Cruz was starting to honestly wonder if this unwelcome visitor in her head was a sign that she was cracking up (or perhaps already _had_ cracked up - which made a lot more sense, when you thought about it) because she could _hear_ the conversations from both sides now, as clearly as if they were happening. She even found herself sketching out the scene that would go with it in her mind's eye - 'Ritza and Papa, standing in front of the window in the living room of their old apartment, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine as they had a civil - but passionate - argument.

_Johnny Hoyle got sloppy_, Papa says, and he is as he was when she was very young - a short, perpetually well-dressed man with a jowly bulldog face, hair still black but beginning to thin at the crown. _You talk of him now like he was a saint. He wasn't, Maritza. No more of a saint than you, certainly. He got sloppy and he did stupid things because he thought he was untouchable. And you did stupid things for the same reason. Stupid things like killing those two men. Stupid things like trusting Noble, like pinning that murder on Nunez and then trying to stick to it even when it all started to unravel. Like going into that hotel room and waving a gun at Yokas. You should have backed down, regrouped, waited for another opportunity. But you didn't. You had to have blood for Letitia, you could see nothing beyond Letitia, and that made you sloppy. And this time it nearly got you killed. _

_In fact, with the way things turned out, it might have been better if it had._

_No_, 'Ritza answers firmly, only in this little fantasy it's not nine-year-old 'Ritza but _twenty_-nine-year-old 'Ritza, an adult Sergeant Cruz complete with badge around her neck, standing there shuffling her feet, looking humble and speaking in low, respectful tones (and wouldn't her colleagues at the Five-Five find this tame, soft-spoken Cruz an interesting specimen!). _No, it was out of my hands, Papa. I was blindsided. I had it all under control, I covered my a - my _tracks_, and I was blindsided. Twice. They hit me from two directions at once. Head on by Yokas and Boscorelli. Broadside by Schaeffer._

Papa only nods sadly and waves a hand, as if he'd expected this line of logic. _Yes, Maritza. By all means, blame everyone else. Blame Boscorelli - who you misjudged about as badly as you ever misjudged anybody in your life. Blame Yokas - who you underestimated about as badly as you ever underestimated anybody in your life. And as for Schaeffer - weren't you expecting him? After what happened to Johnny, weren't you always expecting some rat-squad detective with visions of glory to come gunning for you? Just a matter of time - wasn't that always in the back of your mind? Schaeffer probably even knows about Gaines and Alvarez. Knows or suspects. He's just the type who would see the two deaths and start jumping to wild conclusions. _

_And what do you know - those wild conclusions will ultimately prove to be true. _

Cruz raked her fingers back through her hair and laughed softly at this little scene, though it really wasn't very funny. Arguing with a dead man. Being chastised and lectured to by a dead man. Only it was really herself doing the chastising and lecturing; she had been blindsided and she knew it, but she had _allowed_ herself to be blindsided. She'd allowed them all to get the better of her, Bosco and Yokas and Noble and Schaeffer. Schaeffer especially - and after she'd watched IAB chew Johnny Hoyle to pieces over a few missing _dollars_. Fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice, shame on me. Hadn't she said that very thing to Noble at some point? She thought she had.

But Schaeffer must have had help all the same, some way to get his foot in the door. Probably had another rat like Hart up his sleeve, and that most likely meant someone inside Anti-Crime. That was hard to believe - they'd been a tight group - but it was the only explanation. The question was _who_. Not Dade, that was for sure. Not North. Yoshi ... she had always felt something was a bit _off_ about Yoshi - he always seemed a little standoffish, a little unsure of himself ... but she still didn't figure him for a rat. Reyes ... not likely. Vargas, perhaps, he was new ... or even ...

... or even ...

Cruz's thoughts trailed off, disappearing into a cold pit of dawning horror. Her eyes, which to this point had been roving aimlessly all over her bedroom, had landed on the clock-radio next to her bed.

She had begun this little enterprise at twelve noon, give or take. It had taken her at least twenty minutes to get clear of the hospital - again, give or take. Then another five before her knight in shining yellow armor pulled up to the curb and picked her up, and another ten minutes to get home. Add to that a five minute conversation with Claudia - still give or take. Then another twenty minutes to reach her apartment and pull her battered and exhausted body back from the edge.

Give or take.

The time was now 1:27 P.M.

And she was standing here. Standing here in her room getting lost in her own head. They could already be out looking for her and she had frozen up, letting herself be overwhelmed by all this grim bullshit about humiliating trials and X number of brutal ways to die in prison and dead friends and dead enemies and all the people responsible for her destruction. She had lost her focus. _Again_.

Maybe it _would_ have been better if Yokas had killed her outright, if this was how fucking useless she was now.

Pulse quickening again, Cruz hurried over to the closet. She hitched the hospital robe up at her knees, knelt like a woman preparing to offer up a prayer, and started to to excavate the shoebox containing her stash from the pile of discarded clothes she'd buried it under. She did this with absolutely no finesse; old shirts, tank-tops, shorts, a black miniskirt (practically nonexistent and incredibly uncomfortable, it was the same skirt she'd been wearing the day she first met Maurice Boscorelli), and bits and pieces of underwear went flying over her shoulder as if cast from a small tornado. She reached the box, tore the lid off, and swept up all of the crystal meth in one deft stroke.

If -

(_when_)

she found Aaron Noble, he would have to be fed to keep him under control.

She looked at what was left (which was quite a lot, even considering the relatively small size of the box) and it struck her that there was absolutely nothing to stop her from flushing it all down the toilet. If she was so worried about Schaeffer pegging her as a dope-fiend, why not send it all priority-mail to the New York sewage system?

Come to that, what was stopping her from pulling out the two guns (_Gaines 'n Alvarez_) and taking them with her, perhaps disposing of them at some point along the way?

_Nothing's stopping you. But why bother? Your career is over. Physically over - you're a gimp now and you'll never work in the field again. Which is a moot point, because Schaeffer has your number. Even without the guns or the drugs, he still has you and the rest of the crew by the balls. _

Cruz looked down at the shoebox full of dope for another heartbeat.

Then, before she was even aware of what she was about to do, she turned and flung it across the room.

Again there seemed to be a small tornado localized in her bedroom, this time made up of pills and bottles and little plastic baggies. They went skittering across the floor, the bed (and the oak chest at its foot, with good ol' _Gaines and Alvarez_ stowed deep inside), the dresser on the opposite side of the room. She heard a few of the pills - loose ecstacy tabs, mostly - go down the air duct near the door with a series of tiny, insectile little chittering sounds.

There: drugs everywhere. Save the bastards the trouble of looking.

She only hoped Schaeffer came here personally, and she only hoped he recognized this as the hearty Maritza Cruz _fuck you_ it was meant to be.

With that out of her system she returned her attention to the closet, once again all business. She looked up at the top shelf - nearly seven feet off the floor - nodded tersely to herself, and reached up with her good arm to get what she needed next.

She could not stifle the cry this time; probably couldn't have stifled it even by biting her tongue - the black wave of agony that came out of her shoulder was enough to squeeze a long, thin wail of pain out of her.

She backed off from the closet a pace or two, breathing hard, uttering a long stream of obscenities under her breath, half-English, half-Spanish and only half-intelligible. Tears of pain and a bitter, impotent frustration streamed down her cheeks.

She kept forgetting. Goddammit, she really kept _forgetting_ just how completely fucked up she really was. In a weird way she supposed that was good; it meant she was doing a good job of sitting on the pain. But it also meant she had to be more careful, more conscious of what she was doing. She had to remember her limits. She had to remember that she _had_ limits.

Cruz went back to the closet and reached up again, this time with the slow, deliberate care of the badly arthritic. The strain still hurt her terribly, and after fruitlessly slapping her hand around the shelf for what seemed like forever she thought she wasn't going to be able get what she wanted anyway.

Then, at last, her hand closed around the handle of a small, battered suitcase. She brought it down (nearly rapping herself a good one on the head with it in the process) and popped the clasps, which she'd never bothered to lock.

Inside was another illegal gun. This one packed quite a bit more wallop than the other two - it was a Tec-9 machine-pistol, a gangbanger favorite second only to the MAC-10. Cruz had taken it off a fifteen-year-old gangsta wannabe about four years ago, in what had been a case of outright idealism on her part - the kid had been holding onto it for some of his older "friends." The _real_ gangstas, in other words. Cruz had arrested them all, bypassing and dismissing the kid entirely; arresting him would have been a waste of her time and a waste of his life. The gun itself was never a factor in the arrests - she'd nailed all the homeboys on drug charges, and the Tec-9 had somehow gotten lost in the equation. And _somehow_, it had ended up tucked away in her apartment instead of the evidence locker.

She had an off-duty gun, of course - a licensed and legal SIG/SAUER nine-millimeter - but she felt the Tec-9 was more practical for her; it had a magazine capacity of thirty rounds, compared to the SIG's fourteen. That meant less chance of having to reload in a firefight. She had been trained how to reload a gun one-handed at the Academy, but it wasn't an easy trick even when you were in showroom condition. And concealability wouldn't be a problem - the Tec-9 wasn't much more than a slightly oversized handgun, and it had a frayed strap so that it could be carried over the shoulder like the submachine-gun it essentially was. It would be perfectly at home hidden under a coat.

And if all of that didn't sound logical enough, there was no denying that there was something comforting in it, in its size and weight and feel. Cruz didn't know why she'd kept it - she hadn't known then, and she didn't know now. If she were more of a romantic she might be tempted to believe that it was premonition, destiny, the knowledge that someday she would need it. Maybe, maybe not. In the end it didn't matter. If everything worked out right (and so far, everything pretty much had), it would be the instrument of Richard Buford's death.

There were three fully-loaded magazines in the case along with the gun. Cruz gathered them up and set them aside with Noble's drugs.

Moving quickly now, casting another glance at the clock (which read a very unnerving _1:39_ - getting that damned suitcase down had been a tricky business), she got together an outfit - underwear, cargo pants, a plain, sleeveless tank-top, and a bulky jacket that would both conceal the gun and keep her relatively dry. She managed to bundle the whole package under her good arm, then turned and headed for the bathroom.

And for the first time Cruz caught her reflection - her complete head-to-toe reflection - in the full-length mirror on her bedroom door.

Her heart lurched in her chest.

The first muddled thought that made it through the wall of shock was that the thing looking out at her from the mirror was Lettie, that she was seeing another vivid little mind-movie like her conversation with Papa. Only that had been a fantasy, a conscious fantasy contained entirely in her own head. This thing was staring her in the face. Cruz may have been simply _visualizing_ her father, but was now actually be _seeing_ her dead sister; Lettie had gone Papa one better and come back to haunt her in the flesh.

Cruz took one stumbling step backwards, the bundle of clothes slithering out from under her arm to the floor. Her knees struck the edge of her bed and buckled, and she sat down hard. The illusion was gone in less than a second, but the resemblance to the way Lettie had been that last day in the hospital remained and it was undeniable - ropey hair hanging in her eyes, face cadaverous, eyes sunken and furtive and empty. Her lips (those full, pouty lips both she and Lettie had been blessed with, and of which Maritza had always been secretly vain) were a deep, unnatural red. Part of that was in contrast to her pallor, but part of it was blood - there was dried blood from her bitten tongue still crusted at the edges of her mouth.

Impulsively, she bared her teeth in a grimace.

The effect was immediate and grotesque - a three-day-old corpse left out in the sun.

The next thought that came was surreal, absurd: How could that cabbie have made a crack about her looking _pretty_? Was he just very polite? Blind? Perverted? Was he a necrophiliac, maybe? She had a better understanding of Claudia's reaction, at least - _horror_.

But there was something worse than what had happened to her face, and that was what had happened to her body (that slinky, curvy body, something else she had always been so secretly proud of). She seemed to have actually _changed shape_ - her posture had taken on an oddly pinched, lopsided slant. Because of the shoulder.

The shoulder. The fucking _shoulder_.

Cruz stood up suddenly and moved closer to the mirror, peering owlishly at herself. Then she untied the hospital robe and shucked it. She took the sling off, gently lowering the arm and laying it at her side. The weight of it added an extra layer of pain to the whole experience, but she barely noticed it - she was now deeply, morbidly fascinated by what she was seeing, what she had become. The hospital johnny came last; she ripped it down the center with a vicious, childish contempt. Then she stood naked in front of the mirror, naked but for the dressing, which was now peppered with little red blood-spots.

She realized she wanted to take the bandage off.

She needed to see it. She needed to see _exactly _what that bitch had done to her.

_It's a professional job. If you take it off, you'll never get it back on properly. _

Cruz thought it over, and was not surprised to find that she didn't care.

The dressing came off with almost alarming ease. She tossed it aside, and then stood looking at the horror underneath for almost three full minutes.

The prevailing thought in her mind during that time was raw meat. Raw, bloody meat. But beyond the angry roadmap of sutures and broken, discolored flesh there was again that ominous sense of disproportion: she had not only been wounded but actually _disfigured_. That entire part of her body had taken on a shape that was just entirely wrong; she was listing over to the right, the left shoulder (or rather, the misshapen mass of bone and flesh that now made up the junction between torso and arm, you couldn't rightly _call_ it a shoulder) bunched up and swollen, and _Christ_, she was almost a _hunchback_. She was bleeding, as well - all the moving around wasn't doing her any good.

A dumdum round. Trust Noble to load his pistol with those fucking monstrosities.

And yet it still could have been worse. She had a vague memory of a doctor explaining the mechanics of the wound to her not long after she'd first awoken. Something about the bullet hitting on an angle, plowing up and out when it could easily have gone the other way, tumbled, perhaps hit her lung. She could even have lost the arm entirely. The doctor, as she recalled, had actually told her she'd gotten off _lucky_. Yokas was either a spectacularly bad shot or Noble's gun had been a piece of shit. Or both.

In her eight years with the Department Cruz had witnessed dozens of examples of the human body's terrible fragility; she had seen car accidents - one in particular where the victim's belly had been torn open and his guts strewn across the asphalt to cook in the hot sun. She'd seen gang-shootings with bloody head-wounds and even partial amputations; once she'd seen a shotgun suicide where the head had been gone above the lower jaw. And, of course, she had shot two men in the head at close range, to say nothing of the people she'd killed lawfully, in the line of duty. Bloody, every single one of them. Bloody, dirty, unpleasant.

But she had dealt with it. In one way or another, she had always dealt with it.

Seeing her own body violated, _mutilated_ in such a way was, of course, an entirely different matter.

Cruz sat down heavily on the edge of her bed again, her stomach curdling, shriveling in on itself. Through the window she could hear the vague shouts and hollers of kids on the street outside. Yelling, splashing, playing in the rain. Oblivious to her. Oblivious and living only for the moment, their futures stretched ahead of them, for better or worse. She laughed suddenly, unconsciously; it was the same odd, mirthless bark she'd uttered in front of Claudia after the comment about having a _bad week_. The hopelessness, the despair was trying to get in again, get the upper hand. She was losing her focus and she was hearing the Voice of Doubt again, or maybe she should rename it the Voice of _Reason_, her father's voice, calm and rational and so seductive in its simple truth.

How could she do this? How could she really believe this could ever work? She was nothing now. Nothing. Everything that she was had been taken from her.

Cruz picked up the Tec-9. Hefted it, felt its weight.

That comforting weight.

It would be easy. So easy. Just stick the gun in her ear and pull the trigger. That was what Johnny had done when the wolves were at his door, and she'd hated him for it, oh, she'd _hated_ him, such weakness, such _infantile _weakness, she remembered thinking him so much better than that. But she could see now, she could see why he'd done it, she was exactly where Johnny had been, in that precise place, perhaps even in the middle of that precise_ moment_, and she suspected she could do it. She _knew_ she could do it. If nothing else, it would certainly leave a nice, juicy surprise for them when they got here, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

After a moment, she put the gun down and pulled in a long, ragged breath. She wasn't there just yet. Focus - Noble first. From there, Buford, assuming she stayed lucky, as lucky as she'd been so far. Then ...

Then maybe she'd start thinking about the gun.


	9. Chapter 6: Faith

Author's Quick Little Note: Like the Cruz chapters, this one has received a fairly serious overhaul since it was first posted - originally I wrote an entire scene where Faith returns to the Five-Five, goes into the locker room, and finds her friends ready to welcome her back. Then, for some reason, I wussed out and cut the whole thing, shortening it into a three- or four-paragraph explanation of what happened. I still don't know why I did that - I suppose it's because I (like poor ol' Cruz in this story) occasionally suffer from a Voice of Doubt.

Also note that Monroe is still just Officer Monroe in this timeline.

* * *

I.

Chapter 6

_Faith_

There were three and Faith Yokas knew them intimately; their names and the circumstances around each. She kept them in a locked compartment, a secret place in her mind she rarely allowed herself to open. Part of that was an odd kind of respect; once closed, a casket's lid should not be lifted again, and that was only natural. But in a certain sense it was also because she hated them. She hated them for backing her into such a miserable corner, these selfish, cowardly people, these people who mired themselves in shit up to their necks and then couldn't face the consequences, and so put _her_ into the position of executioner. It wasn't just the worst part of the job; it was the _dirtiest_, the most shameful. You weren't supposed to look at it that way, but she did nonetheless. And she knew she always would.

Because they always looked so harmless afterwards, didn't they? So pathetic. Didn't matter if they'd just been shooting at you with a MAC-10 or holding you hostage in a botched bank robbery. When it was over it was always just somebody's son (or daughter, she reminded herself darkly) lying there, somebody whose sins probably amounted to no more than a few bad decisions, a few mistakes ... and now here they were, they'd ended up _dead_ for it. They had themselves to blame, true, but it didn't mean she could sit back and deny her own responsibility. Everything, every moment, _every last second_ in their entire lifetime, the sum of all they ever were, erased in a split second. By _her_.

This time it was different. _Worse_, somehow, even though Cruz was still alive. Faith had gone over and over it in her mind, trying to focus in on exactly what her line of thinking had been just before firing that shot. She'd called it her _moment of clarity_, but it didn't seem so clear to her now. She turned it this way and that and just kept coming around to the same uneasy conclusion; that she had simply chosen to resolve an explosive situation by taking the easiest, deadliest way out. She'd decided in a nanosecond that Cruz was not only an _immediate_ threat - certifiably insane, in fact - but a more general kind of menace as well. Too dangerous to be a cop, to be allowed to wield that power. Too slippery, too good at worming her way out of the grim little messes she created while she left others to drown in them. Someone like that had to be stopped, didn't they? Sure they did. Stopped by any means necessary.

For the greater good.

Kind of sounded a bit like something Cruz herself might say, didn't it?

_Well, you know what they say - you always become the thing you hate. Right? To destroy thy enemy you must become thy enemy. Right? Maybe that's the great irony here. Shooting Cruz has turned you _into_ Cruz. Wouldn't _that_ be funny? _

No. Absolutely _not_ funny. And the thought did nothing to change her resolve. Her administrative leave was over, she was fully cleared of any wrongdoing, and as such she was fully entitled to be back at work. She would work out her doubts on her own time; right now, the best thing to do - the best _therapy_ - would be to throw herself right back into it. It was essential that she do this, essential to her peace of mind. Essential to her _recovery_.

Backing off was not an option now anyway - she had her gear packed and stowed, and Fred was driving her to the Five-Five. She was committed.

The first night home had been very bad. By that time she'd been physically sick, throwing up at regular intervals and crying in between, hopelessly unable to get the smell of cordite out of her nose, to get that awful, gummy feeling of Cruz's blood off her hands. She'd cried and cried as Fred held her, trying to comfort but patient with her because sometimes that terrible, desperate shame would abruptly turn to rage, and she would scream and beat his chest with her fists. It had swung back and forth, back and forth, endlessly, over and -

_- I tried to kill her -_

_(She brought it on herself)_

_- I'm a murderer -_

_(She's still alive)_

_- But now I know I'm _capable_ of murder -_

_(The stupid bitch never should have been there)_

_- I tried to kill her for no good reason -_

_(She had a gun, goddammit)_

_- She was bluffing, I should have known she was bluffing, she was all hot air anyway -_

_(No, she sure as hell _was not

and over. Second guessing herself, wondering if what she did was right, wondering if there might not have been another way out. Not unfamiliar territory by any stretch, but ...

... but sometimes she got scared. And _that_ was something that had started long before she'd even met Maritza Cruz. It scared her whenever she reminded herself that she had once left a gangbanger on enemy turf, knowing he'd be mercilessly beaten, tortured, probably murdered. It scared her how, a little over a year ago, it had been almost an entire day before she realized she'd killed a man in a shootout. She could lie awake for hours thinking about those things, wondering what the job she'd loved for almost a decade - a job that had been so good to her - might be turning her into, wondering what she had become.

And wondering what she _would_ become. Down the road. There was always that to think on, as well.

The fact that she had shot Cruz scared her. The fact that she couldn't remember exactly why _terrified_ her. And the fact that she'd followed Bosco so easily scared her, because no matter what she'd gone into that hotel room believing, in the end it had nothing to do with saving an innocent man from jail; in the end, she'd simply allowed her judgement to be clouded by some sentimental memory of the way things used to be between them. The temptation to just forget everything that had been said, overlook the rift that had yawned opened between them, and _be partners_ again. She had been seduced by one -

_(Why me, Bosco? Why is it always me?)_

_(Because you're the only one. Faith, I don't have anyone else)_

cute little exchange of words that had ended with Bosco all but throwing himself at her feet. That was all it took, that one pathetic, self-pitying little retort ... and the secret gratification of knowing she had been right all along. She'd let him dangle a bit first, pretended not to be interested, and oh, that _had_ been fun, hadn't it? To watch him squirm like that. You bet. She could still remember it, standing there outside the Five-Five between the squad cars, Bosco pale and haggard and edgy, as if he'd somehow caught that bitch's disease in a peculiar physical sense and it was slowly killing him. She was looking at the archetype of the man who had thrown in with the devil, a man who was discovering what it felt like when that came around to bite you hard on the ass, just like it always does. Well, the poor bastard had to learn his lesson at some point, didn't he?

So why the hell didn't she just stand back and let him?

And brothers and sisters, what _really_ scared her was that she couldn't even tell her husband these things. She'd expected it all to come pouring out, all of it. She'd _wanted_ it to. She'd wanted to just come clean and tell him that it was all her fault, that she had taken on Bosco's problem, that she had fired first, that Cruz hadn't actually made a threatening move. She'd lied to everyone else about it, so she was damned if she would lie to him.

And in the end she'd lied anyway. Through her tears and near-hysteria she had _lied_, throwing all the responsibility on Cruz. Cruz and _Bosco_, even though she had made her own decisions every step of the way.

Things had gone quiet between her and Fred after that. Not _tense_ exactly, but skirting the edge, because something was still clearly wrong and Fred knew it. And yet she still kept it all to herself - the doubt, the guilt, the dim, inarticulate horror at what she'd done. Fred respected her silence, gave her plenty of space, but she knew that he could see that she was still holding something back.

But she couldn't do it. For some damned reason, she couldn't tell him what was wrong.

In many ways, she didn't even know herself.

She forced herself out of this uneasy reflection as she sensed the truck slowing down, taking the last corner before they hit the precinct. Still turned away from Fred, she closed her eyes and started counting backwards from one hundred, concentrating on the sound of the rain as it hammered its idiot drumbeat on the roof, the hypnotic _ruck-ruck-ruck_ of the windshield wipers. Trying to calm herself, trying to get past it all, lock it all away as she'd locked away the names of those she'd killed. It was finished, it couldn't be changed, and the only thing to do was move on.

That simple, right?

Fred pulled the truck over to the curb.

Then she heard him say, almost conversationally: "Oh shit."

Faith opened her eyes, looked out, and felt herself go rigid with shock.

The media had landed. A small group of bedraggled reporters had hemmed in the Five-Five, along with a couple of news-vans sporting various decals. Channel One. Channel Five. Channel This and Channel That. There was a guy with a TV camera on his shoulder not too far from where Fred had parked, aiming it at a well-dressed young woman who stood importantly in front of the precinct, yammering into a microphone and holding an umbrella unsteadily with her other hand. The whole ridiculous mess was being kept at arms' length by a few unlucky token cops (guys currently on Lieutenant Swersky's shit list, Faith guessed dimly) who looked wet and tired and ready to start macing people.

Fred put the truck in park. She could already sense him looking at her, working out what, if anything, he should say, trying to guess what she would want to do, how she'd want to proceed.

She didn't know. God, she'd never even expected this.

Option One: get out and go in. Be pretty hairy, wouldn't it? But she could go in low and quick, head down, shoulders hunched, pretend she was protecting herself from the rain and just rhino-charge her way through the fuckers. Maybe screaming _no comment!_'s over her shoulder all the way.

Very dignified.

Option Two: tell Fred to swing the truck around and take her home. Now _that_ sounded like a much smarter move. Sounded _reasonable_. She could go back inside, put her gear in a corner somewhere and then go and sit on the couch, maybe with a bucket of Ben & Jerry's in her lap and a big old spoon to go with it. Watch some TV (but not the news, oh _hell_ no). Greet the kids when they came home from school, maybe plop 'em down on the couch next to her so they could all watch _the Simpsons_ together.

And she could tell herself that _sure, I didn't go in today, but there's always tomorrow, right?_

Yeah, that would be _very_ healthy, wouldn't it?

Fred was still watching her. She realized she was biting her nails and made herself stop.

_Any minute now he's gonna ask me if I'm okay. _

"You okay?"

She emitted an odd, snorting little laugh and turned to him, forcing a smile. "Yeah. I'm fine, I just ..."

_I just didn't think, that's all. I just didn't kickstart my fucking brain and _think_ about this._

Faith turned back to the window and looked out over it all again, still stunned by what she was seeing and appalled at her own stupidity for not anticipating it. She hadn't watched the news at all over the last few days - hadn't even picked up a newspaper. And yet she'd _known_ that the entire Anti-Crime unit was being dismantled, that almost every cop who'd worked up there was being charged with a crime, and that _was_ big news. Then factor in the shootout in Noble's hotel room, plus Cruz's part in both that _and_ Anti-Crime ...

Jesus, why _wouldn't_ the papers and the major networks be crawling all over it? This was going to be up there with Rodney King, The OJ trial, the LAPD Rampart scandal. One of those little pocket disasters destined to become pop-culture fodder, endlessly raked over in the news and beaten into the ground by late-night comedians.

Faith thought of David Letterman making Sergeant Cruz jokes and just managed to catch another of those funny little burps of laughter in time to stifle it. Good thing, too. Fred was worried about her enough as it was.

"You sure you want to go back in today, babe?" he said at last. "Maybe ... maybe it'd be good to ... you know, take another few days off."

He flinched a bit, just a _bit_, as if expecting a blow, and Faith felt the first real flash of irritation. She'd been thinking that very thing only a few seconds ago herself, of course, but there had been no risk in that - as long as it stayed inside her own head, she was safe. Now that the suggestion was out in the open air, though, now that it had come from somebody _else's_ mouth, it had a certain enticing logic to it.

After all, just _look_ out there. Look at them all.

What the hell - Fred might be right.

_Doesn't matter if he is. I still have to do this. I'm just looking for an excuse not to. That's all. And what's the big deal about the press? What's the worst the vultures can do? Tie me down and make me talk? I'm not accountable to them. _

"I have to start somewhere, don't I?" she said shortly. "If I take one more day off, I'll take two. Then three. And on and on like that. I'm not letting this thing scare me away from my job." She looked out at the reporters. At the moment several of them were being shooed away from the firehouse across the street like bothersome insects. A green panel van with an antenna on top had parked right across the firehouse's bay doors. The van was adorned with big, garish decals that proclaimed it to be the newsmobile of _NY-BackTalk!_ (_Where We Put You Right!_). Jimmy Doherty was trying to make them move, and appeared to be arguing with the cameraman.

Faith swept a hand over it all. "I'm not letting _them_ scare me away, Fred."

_Or Cruz. Because that's what this is really about, right? If I keep running and hiding, Cruz scores a victory. And if I keep running and hiding, it looks like I'm guilty of something. _

_Problem is, maybe I am. _

"I'm cleared," she said, more to herself and with more conviction than she actually felt. "I have every right to be here."

She grabbed her duffel bag and all but _shoved_ the door open, hard enough to make the hinges groan and the whole truck rock on its springs. She had it licked - she was going in and that was that. As long as Fred didn't say anything else, she'd be okay. No more badgering. No slipping tempting little suggestions in her ear about calling this off and waiting for another day.

"Faith -" Fred began gingerly.

_And here it is! _she thought with a sudden, bright anger._ I knew it! I knew it was coming! He keeps quiet all week, no pressure, good ol' Fred. The _new_ Fred; patient and calm and open and hopped up to the eyeballs on Jesus. And now, right outside the precinct, he's gonna start. After I lose two nights' worth of sleep preparing myself for this, psyching myself up, never thinking I'd have to walk through this goddam traveling sideshow on top of everything else ..._

"Faith?" he repeated.

She wheeled on him. "_What?_"

Fred only sat watching her, unperturbed.

"C'mere," he said at last, and held out his arm. He was smiling a bit. Probably knew full well that she was locked and loaded and ready to tear him a few new bodily openings. Teasing, in his way; all he wanted to do was wish her luck.

She laughed. Tears - half-shame, half-affection - prickled the corners of her eyes as she leaned back into the truck. He caught her in an awkward kind of one-armed embrace and kissed her forehead.

"I'll be okay," she said, and then broke away quickly before she could do something really stupid, like start blubbering. She slammed the door and started towards the Five-Five, her chest tightening, eyes darting between the building and the little press camp out front, looking for an opening. Would they even know who she was? Probably not. So far as she knew, no actual names or faces had been released. But that didn't mean they wouldn't land on her and start nattering.

_Nothing says you have to go _through_ them, stupid. The precinct has more than one door, after all. _

The idea provoked an immediate, intense disgust that blew all of her apprehension away in a heartbeat. Slinking in through a side door was _not_ the way she was going to start her first shift back. She would walk right the hell through them and use the front door. It was her _right_.

She had nothing - _nothing_ - to be ashamed of, and it was her right.

* * *

Bad as that first night at home was, she could still remember it. She supposed it was because home - home with Fred and the kids - was at least familiar. Safe.

But Faith had little sense of exactly what went on in the three or four hours immediately following the shooting. Snapshots mostly, momentary stopovers in the run of her memories that seemed to stand out a little clearer, but there was really nothing solid in between to string them together.

She had a sketchy idea of the actual journey from hotel to hospital. Bosco handled the driving, of course, using the marked RMP Faith had driven to the hotel in. Noble had gone along for the ride, in cuffs and mostly by default - he'd been Bosco's prisoner, and in a peculiar sense he had also been Bosco's prize, won back (at a very high price) from Cruz. Though he was far into withdrawal by that point and all but chewing his fingertips off, Noble had wisely kept his mouth shut and stayed still throughout the trip. The atmosphere in the car was icy and complicated, _combustible_, maybe even more so than in the hotel room just before everything went to hell. Not a word passed between Faith and Bosco on that trip, the silence broken only by the car's siren and that of the ambulance carrying Cruz, which they kept in their sights the whole way over.

She remembered repeatedly washing her hands - once in Noble's room and several more times at Mercy. Three times, she thought, maybe four altogether, though she was no longer quite sure and didn't much care to know anyway. She only knew that she must have washed them _hard_, because her palms itched and stung for two days after. She remembered scrubbing with the distracted, automated desperation of the lifelong obsessive-compulsive, and she found it mildly surprising that she_ wasn't_ an obsessive-compulsive handwasher now as a result. Thank God for the small mercies.

She remembered the very last glimpse she had gotten of Cruz. Cruz, who had tried to strong-arm her way into getting what she wanted (something she'd been doing for most of her career and quite probably most of her life) and nearly ended up dead for her trouble. Cruz, who had made it halfway to consciousness in the hotel room and began to twist and snap like a snake when the paramedics started to move her. Twist and snap and _scream_. At one point in her thrashing she had somehow gotten her good hand around a hypodermic and came very close to stabbing one of her attending paramedics in the eye. She hadn't succeeded, so you could look at it a certain way and laugh - even badly injured and semi-conscious and three baby steps away from dead, Maritza Cruz was still apt to bite you if you let your guard down. By the time Faith saw her at Mercy, however, the Sergeant had been sedated and was being shipped off to the OR, leaving the cut-up ruins of her clothes in a bloody clump on the floor of one of the trauma rooms.

She remembered meeting up with Davis and Sully, along with about half the firefighters from the precinct and Alex Taylor's mother. She remembered Davis telling her about the accident, the explosion in which Taylor had died and Lieutenant Johnson had been cataclysmically burned, Sully adding that it had been the result of a car chase - an _unauthorized_ car chase - that had gone down earlier that afternoon. An unauthorized car chase pursued by Anti-Crime officers. By the Anti-Crime _sergeant_.

Faith remembered how the connection had made her feel sick all over again.

She remembered the fight with Bosco in the washroom - the gist of it, anyway - and the less said -

_(Who are you trying to convince? Because it sounds to me like you're trying to convince _yourself

about that the better.

And she remembered enough to acknowledge that not all of what happened at Mercy was necessarily bad. Faith remembered a paramedic (the one who had almost gotten the needle in the eye) coming over to her as she sat in a semi-daze on a waiting room chair. This was much later, after most of the uproar over both catastrophes had died down. Faith was waiting to be checked over when the medic suddenly knelt in front of her and introduced herself as Holly Levine. Then she offered Faith an apple. An _apple_, if you could believe it. Levine and her partner had been called in from another precinct to attend to the Melrose shooting; everyone in the Five-Five's jurisdiction had been busy with the ten-car pileup that Cruz (and Bosco, don't _ever_ forget his part in it) had caused that afternoon. Levine was youngish, blonde, with round, expressive eyes and a kind of dreamily maternal manner Faith associated with New Agers and flaky self-help obsessives.

Faith recalled actually thinking that, too, as Levine knelt in front of her - _New Agers and flaky self-help obsessives_, word for word. She had felt sick shame wash over her almost immediately, as if she'd said it right to Levine's face. Because Levine was only trying to be kind. And she _had_ been kind, even though Faith had been in a pretty frightening state. Though she'd cleaned her hands (oh, they were so clean they fucking _hurt_) by then, she'd still been wearing her ruined uniform, covered in so much drying blood and puke that it was stiffening up into a kind of shell. She had looked like an ax-murderer after a fine day on the job, and the smell coming off her had been absolutely rank, and yet none of that had stopped Levine from offering her a shoulder to lean on.

And an apple.

Faith had accepted it for politeness' sake, but afterwards she had lost track of it somewhere along the way. She hadn't felt much like eating at the time.

Or since, come to that.

What Faith remembered the most clearly out of the whole night, though, was Lieutenant Swersky's reaction.

Initially, it was worse than she would have imagined. The timing was bad, for a start; he'd arrived at Mercy just in time to see Cruz being taken to surgery looking like something scraped from the underside of a truck. At the same time he found himself up to his neck in the aftermath of the other business; Davis and Sully and their little tale, the guys from the firehouse waiting for news on Johnson (along with Johnson's wife and children, who by that time were right there with them), and perhaps worst of all, Taylor's mother. For Swersky it had been like walking through a minefield of bad news.

His mood didn't even approach anger - it _transcended_ it. Swersky shot right past anger and rage and whatever might lie beyond, and went purely berserk. Once he'd been briefed on the day's events, from the accident on up to exactly how Cruz had come to be in such a state, he'd calmly gathered all of the participants from the hotel party together in one of the waiting rooms, and then proceeded to verbally skin each of them alive. On a case-by-case basis.

Not surprisingly, he'd started with Bosco, a principle actor in everything that had gone down that day. Two separate and seemingly unrelated fiascos, and you had Maurice Boscorelli smack in the middle of both. The fur had flown, and Faith half-remembered watching it with her mouth hanging open and her eyes goggling out of her head like a little kid. He yelled. He screamed. He _swore._ When it came to profanity Swersky tended to stick to the common vernacular, although he rarely dropped the F-bomb unless he was most severely pissed at something. That night at Mercy hospital, however, the Lieutenant had attained a level of obscenity that was almost poetic. While unloading on Bosco he had invoked _fuck_ at least nine times, and each time it sounded as crisp and incisive as a gunshot. When words failed him, he just kept right on going, diving even further into a goody bag of gutter words Faith had never heard the man use before. _Cocksucker_. _Motherfucker_. Even _whoremaster_, which Faith thought of as a more backwoods-small-town colloquialism than something you'd hear in New York, New York. Like Faith herself, Swersky seemed to have lost whatever grudging respect he'd once had for Bosco, and as a result he was merciless. The day's tally was a dead and mutilated paramedic, a monstrously burned firefighter, and a badly maimed police sergeant. And Bosco shared the blame in all three. Faith had never seen the Lieu so upset, and she remembered worrying in a distracted sort of way about his heart.

After promising Bosco that he would be delivering pizzas for a living by the end of the week, Swersky then turned his attention to Aaron Noble. The writer, drenched in sweat and climbing the walls, promptly clammed up. He refused to answer even the most innocuous questions without a lawyer present, and claimed to have seen nothing. _Who shot who first? Why, I didn't see it, sir. Nossir, absolutely not. Had my eyes shut the whole time. That Cruz is one scary gal. _

This mulishness had provoked Swersky into another tirade somehow even more awe-inspiring than the first.

Eventually it was Faith's turn, and by the time the Lieutenant worked his way around to her, he should have cooled off a bit. He hadn't. Here, after all, was the woman who had sauntered away from her post at eight o'clock to take a meal period, and by quarter to nine had somehow managed to shoot a fellow police officer. All things considered, Swersky had probably saved the best for last.

If he had, though, he never got the chance to use it. That was because the moment Swersky fixed eyes on her, Faith went completely bonkers. She wasn't trying to make a play for sympathy by going all girly-girl - it just happened, and she didn't even know it was going to happen until it did. She broke down right there in front of everybody, crying quite literally like a baby, trying to speak through big, whooping sobs that kept knocking her words all over the place. Looking at the crack-glaze of blood and vomit on her uniform, Swersky put the rest together for himself; Cruz had lost it, and Faith had had to respond with lethal force.

Except that was a lie. It was a lie but Swersky had swallowed it as truth almost without question, just as neatly and easily as he'd bought the little _going out to scratch up something to eat_ bit that opened the whole can of worms in the first place.

Presently, Swersky appeared to be right back where she'd left him that night. When she last walked out of this building he'd been sitting behind the main desk, leafing through what she thought might have been a newspaper (or possibly a fishing magazine - she saw those scattered around the desk from time to time). It had been a slow night, and Swersky had taken the opportunity to catch up on some reading.

He was reading now, too, flipping through what looked like a report with one hand and sipping delicately at a cup of steaming coffee with the other. As she drew nearer Faith could see a small litter of stir-sticks, empty sweetener packets, and an open lunch-sized carton of cream on the desk nearby.

Faith guessed that his diet had gone by the boards, at least for today.

And that might have had something to do with what he was looking at; whatever the paper in his hand was, it didn't appear to be light reading. Swersky's frown deepened visibly as he scanned down the page, mouthing words softly and inaudibly as he read, pausing occasionally to shake his head and grunt something under his breath. He was almost scowling when he caught her in his peripheral vision and looked up.

The scowl disappeared instantly under a broad, warm smile. "Hey, Faith!"

She nodded and returned what felt like a reasonable approximation of his smile, but said nothing. Swersky went back to his report, the accompanying frown reappearing almost at once.

Simple as that. Just looked up and said hi, then back to his business.

This was good. This was a good way to start things off, no doubt about that. But she had never really expected anything but a warm welcome from Swersky; with Bosco and Cruz shouldering all the blame, the water between them was clear again. That was good, but this was still only the front desk. It was the locker room she was worried about. It was the _others_ she was worried about. Cruz was not well-liked around the Five-Five and never had been, but she was still a cop and that could still count for a lot. And while Faith was not in any way responsible for bringing down all those _other_ Anti-Crime cops, it could certainly look that way, couldn't it? Sure it could. Faith Yokas could make a handy little scapegoat for those looking to brand somebody a rat, couldn't she?

_She did this!_ they'd all say. _She brought all this negative attention down on our heads! _

_All this nasty press. _

_All this _bad karma

_I'm getting silly again here, _she thought._ And that's good, too. A good sign. I think it is, anyway. _

It was. Of course it was. If she could turn her fear - her _irrational_ fear - into a joke, then wasn't that a good coping mechanism? Absolutely it was. You called that whistling in the dark. Or, to use a more colorful phrase her mother had coined (or claimed she had, anyway), Faith was _dancin' past the graveyard_. Because it was all nonsense - all of this worry over her place in the NYPD. Her place in the NYPD hadn't changed.

So why, then, did there seem to be a series of steel belts drawing themselves around her torso, constricting her ribcage and making it hard to breathe? Because that was exactly what was happening to her right now, and she could really feel those suckers, too - it wasn't just some fancy metaphorical way to describe her nervousness. Faith could feel them very clearly against her skin, could even articulate physical detail; she imagined flexible but very tough straps woven out of some kind of heavy-gauge metal fiber, one looped above her breasts, one below, and one wrapped around her stomach. And all of them cinched tight.

She thought that people who suffered panic attacks often reported such symptoms as warning signs of an impending episode. Yes, she thought she might have read that somewhere. Feelings of being pressured. Compressed. _Squeezed_. And you couldn't shake them, no matter what you told yourself.

She'd never had a panic attack before in her life (unless popping a valve at Mercy counted) but she thought she'd probably know one if she felt it coming on.

_Panic attack. Imagine having one of _those_ babies, right here in the middle of the precinct. _

Faith mentally slapped herself as she started for the locker room. She had to stop this. She was letting it get away from her and she had to stop it.

"You're gonna be late," Swersky said as she passed the desk. She stiffened for a moment, searching his tone for something accusatory, then inwardly swatted herself again. When she turned she found him still smiling, though it had taken on a bit of a harried edge. He held up the paper he was reading and waved it. "But then, so am I. I'm supposed to read _this_ by the end of the day."

"What is it?"

Swersky shook his head and threw the report on the desk. Then he drew his hands down over his face and sighed, an expression of such perfect exhaustion that Faith hauled off and gave herself another crisp internal smack upside the head. She was being selfish as well as needlessly paranoid. The events of the past week went far beyond her and her own struggles with her apprehension and guilt, and it was as hard on Swersky as it was on anybody.

_More so, my dear. He's the one in the hot seat here. So for the last time, shut up and quit whining. _

"That's my _homework_," Swersky said. "Love letter from the Monster. Nothing I want to talk about."

"The Monster?"

"Schaeffer. That's what they call him in IAB circles, apparently - The Monster. Because he's such a big ugly fucker. Among other things. _That_" - Swersky stabbed a finger at the report as if it were a large and very poisonous snake - "is a lot of his typical bullshit, including a list of changes that he wants made around here. Goes on for about three pages. He writes just like he talks, did you know that? Sarcastic fuck." His shoulders sagged suddenly. He shook his head and waved a weary hand at the air. "Look at me, unloading on you the second you come through the door. _Shit_. But this is getting to me, Faith. It really is. I've got Schaeffer to contend with, and I've got One Police Plaza coming down on my ass because we should have been keeping this Anti-Crime thing as low-key as possible. But somebody leaked the story. It's all out on the wire - all of it. What am I supposed to do about that?" He nodded towards the door. "Didn't have any trouble getting through that fucking monkey farm out front, did you?"

Faith studied him doubtfully. Swersky had just said "fuck" three times in less than a minute. That didn't even _touch_ his little Mercy Speech, but it was still a personal record for him, she was sure. He was a bit pissed all right. Stressed out and pissed off.

Answering his question, she just said, "Nah, no trouble." And that was the truth - she'd gotten into the building without having to fend off a single microphone. In fact, as far as she had been able to see the reporters hadn't noticed her at all, one perfectly nondescript woman skittering through their midst with her gear slung over her shoulder. The press had had no idea that the instigator - yes, the very _eye_ of the storm herself - was walking right through them. And Faith was not so overwrought that she couldn't take a certain playful glee in that. Oh, how they'd _love_ to get their hands on _her_! And yet they never would! Didn't even know who she was! Let them fumble around in the dark. _Monkey farm_, indeed.

She thought she just might be feeling those steel straps starting to loosen a bit - just the tiniest bit. Whatever else might be going on, whatever was going on outside, it was still business as usual in here. Swersky was in the hot seat, yes, and he was pissed off. But that was what they paid him the big bucks for, wasn't it? The Lieutenant money.

"Good," Swersky said. He jabbed a friendly finger at her. "But if you _get_ any trouble from them, you tell me. Right? If you get any trouble, if you _see_ anybody getting hassled, anything at all, you tell me right away. The second those bottom-feeders start interfering with the smooth operation of this precinct, heads are gonna fucking roll. Things are running funky enough around here as it is."

"Absolutely," Faith agreed brightly. Then she added, just for fun: "Some news van was blocking the bucket boys in when I got here."

This was not meant as a genuine complaint; it was mostly just her nerves running away with her mouth, making inane conversation to reinforce that sense of how humdrum and normal it was here. Talking out of her ass, in other words. But the moment it was out Swersky's eyes lit up, and Faith realized with something like dismay that he was not just a _bit pissed_ - he was still on the warpath. He wanted an excuse to go out there and send them all scattering. He wanted to hear those fucking heads a-rolling. And here she was, standing here blurting out random trash.

"They're blocking the firehouse?" he said, eyes narrowed. "Were they still there when you came in?"

"No," she said hastily, her gaze flicking up over Swersky's shoulder as something behind him caught her eye. "No, Doherty was out there and ... uh ... I think he ran them off ... I don't know if they ..."

Faith trailed off, peering past the main desk and watching as two men - middle-aged, expensively dressed, and utterly devoid of any human facial expression - made their way carefully down the stairs from the upper landing. In its troubled state her mind immediately and inexplicably christened them Huey and Louey. Huey and Louey were moving slowly because they were both carrying heavy and awkward burdens. Their footsteps were jerky and hesitant, probing each step as they went in an almost comically synchronized little dance. The first was carrying a ridiculously overstacked pile of manila file folders. The second was carrying a computer tower with its accompanying keyboard and mouse balanced precariously on top; the cords from each peripheral whisked and flapped along the floor behind him, just waiting to trip somebody up. Or for someone to step on them and send the whole mess flying.

There was nothing particularly unusual or threatening about them - they could easily have been a pair of lawyers, perhaps even homicide detectives with an unusual flair for vanity, but Faith knew on sight that they were neither. They looked like cops but they also looked somehow _wrong_ here, just plain out of their natural habitat, and she needed neither the expensive suits nor their stern Joe Friday expressions to tell her they were Internal Affairs.

Two IAB cops. Carrying away bits of equipment and records.

_Bits of Anti-Crime_, she thought coldly. _I am, at this very moment, looking at what's left of Maritza Cruz's Anti-Crime unit. One little part of it, anyway. They're stripping the place down to the bare wires._

_God, what the hell was going _on_ up there?_

And it didn't stop with Huey and Louey. Focused entirely on Swersky to this point, Faith hadn't really made much of an effort to actually pivot her neck around to see what else might have changed. And something _had_ changed, all right. The precinct was different. Colder. Emptier. Quieter. Almost as quiet as it had been the night she'd snuck out to the Melrose.

_Except that was late in the evening, _she thought uneasily._ This is three in the afternoon. The place ought to be hopping. _

But it wasn't.

So it seemed things were not quite as normal and humdrum as she'd first thought. Things were quite the opposite of normal and humdrum, and now that she'd seen it Faith found it impossible to _un_see it. She looked around, and she _could_ see other cops going about their business ... cops who were silent and stony-faced and obviously very tightly wound, moving about in quick, deliberate strides. They had the air of men and women who wanted to do whatever they were here to do and then get back out on the streets as fast as possible. Back outside and away from here. Faith saw one older, haggard-looking uniformed cop stop long enough to mutter something to Huey and Louey as they passed, something Faith very much doubted was a friendly howdy-do. The two detectives, however, didn't even seem to notice him.

If they were anything like Schaeffer, Faith doubted they would have cared anyway.

Schaeffer. The Monster. Now there was something else to worry about - Schaeffer was probably lurking around here somewhere, and she was in no mood to deal with him. She had no idea why that should be, because she really didn't have anything _against_ the man; he'd cleared her, after all, and seemingly with very little deliberation. He was dedicated to his work and he was dedicated to bringing Cruz and her band of merry men to justice. Admirable guy. But while she respected him for that much, _Monster_ suited him down to the ground, because there _was_ something undeniably scary about him. He was not a man who played favorites or harbored any loyalties, and he liked his job too damned much. He'd send her up the river without batting an eyelash, if she gave him a reason.

More than that, however, Faith just didn't feel much like dealing with anybody who could function as a reminder of the last couple of days. As a reminder of _Cruz_. Cruz was the past. Best to keep her there, along with anything remotely connected to her.

"- are they moving or not?"

Faith started.

Swersky. Swersky was talking to her.

She broke away from watching the IAB suits and shook the dust out of her head. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You were saying something about Jimmy Doherty running off a bunch of reporters. Then you said 'I don't know if they...' Don't know if they what?"

Faith tried on a hangdog, aw-shucks smile. It felt much less sincere this time, and she thought the belts around her chest and belly might be tightening up again after all. "Nothing. It's fine, Jimmy handled it. Look, I'm late so I'd better ... you know ..." She waved lamely in the direction of the locker room.

"Right. Roll Call's gonna be a little late today, though." Swersky paused. Then he smiled again and tipped his coffee mug towards her. "It _is_ good to see you back, Faith."

"Thanks," she said, and she meant it, but she'd already started off at a healthy trot. She had done a complete about-face in her thinking; she was now itching to reach the locker room and the relative safety it offered. The more she looked around, the more she saw how truly tense it was here. How _forbidding_ it was here. And it was scaring her. It was scaring her because it was the Five-Five and yet it _wasn't_ the Five-Five; the building was right, but the air inside it was all wrong. It was unknown territory. This was ridiculous, of course, _irrational_, but like everything else she was feeling at the moment, the idea didn't come from a part of her brain that had anything to do with rationality. It came from the other side, the part that harbored that twittery little fight-or-flight response, the voice that kept telling her to turn and run. There _was_ danger here, it insisted. Just look around - there were reporters waving microphones. IAB goons carting away evidence like ants marching away from a picnic basket.

And there was the possibility of Schaeffer.

_Lions and tigers and bears_, she thought, and smiled brokenly to herself. _Oh my._

"Oh, and I've got you riding with Monroe today!" Swersky called after her.

Faith fired an absent wave over her shoulder but didn't break stride. Monroe - that was good, fine, whatever. She liked Monroe. She trusted Monroe. But right now she needed to get to the locker room.

She sped up the pace a bit. She was probably starting to look a lot like a woman suffering a full bladder, bouncing lightly and urgently along the hall, looking for a washroom where she could offload. Probably looked pretty silly.

Faith didn't care. Nobody was paying any attention to her anyway, and she wanted to keep it that way.

_This is stupid. You are being very stupid. You're making a fool of yourself. You're making a fool of yourself _in front of _yourself, if no-one else. You're gonna look back on this later and want to stick your head in an oven._

Maybe so. But she couldn't _help_ it. She had to get some walls around her. Hide between the lockers.

No, not _hide - hide_ was all wrong. She needed to take a breather. She was ready to be back - it was just that seeing those IAB detectives walking away with pieces of Cruz's gear had thrown her a bit. That, and seeing how tense things were around here. And the media circus outside. A little wonkiness was perfectly understandable, as long as she remained in control of herself. Which she was.

Faith didn't exactly hit the locker room at a dead run, but it was close.

* * *

End of Part I 


	10. Chapter 6, Part II

Chapter 6 Continued

II.

She met John Sullivan just as he was coming out.

Except that in this case, "met" was defined as nearly killing him with the door; Sully was already suited up and probably just on his way out to Roll Call when Faith slammed into the room as if borne on the crest of a hurricane. He managed to get his arm up in time to deflect the door, saving himself a good whack on the head and possibly even a broken nose, but Faith had still put sufficient _oomph_ into it to send him stumbling back a few steps.

She came up short and dropped her duffel bag on the floor. Her panic - and that _was _what it had been turning into, no fooling herself - seemed to pop like a bubble. She felt it go just like that, too, a kind of wet little _plip!_ sensation in her mind, but instead of the relief she should have felt, there was only an entirely different kind of dismay left in its place. This was now becoming a farce. She was moving steadily out of the realm of making an ass of herself and heading into full-fledged public spectacle.

"Oh Jesus!" she cried, taking a step towards Sully, who was rubbing his elbow. "Sully! God, I'm sorry, I - !"

Sully drew away from her, still cupping his elbow and wincing. "Forget it," he snapped. He sounded gruff and ill-tempered, but Faith didn't let herself read much of anything into that. Even in the best of moods John Sullivan sounded gruff and ill-tempered.

He resumed course for the door, then seemed to realize exactly who it was he was talking to. His face registered a very brief glimmer of surprise. Then he was just Sully again. "You _that_ eager to be back, are you, Faith?"

She laughed. It was the delirious, tittery laugh of someone who has narrowly avoided some horrible and probably very undignified death, but it was a laugh all the same. "Uh ... no ... sorry, I - "

_(These are your friends. For Christ's sake, _they aren't going to bite

"- I'm just a little nervous," she finished with a bit more confidence. Then she ventured: "It's ... uh ... It's kinda awkward out there, isn't it?"

"Air's a little soupy, yeah," Ty Davis's voice said from somewhere to Sully's left. Faith craned her neck around the edge of the first row of lockers. Ty was standing in front of one of the sinks and brushing his teeth, which probably explained why he sounded like he was talking with his mouth full. "You see what they did to Anti-Crime?"

Faith pointed over her shoulder. "I ... uh ... I saw two IAB detectives ... at least, I think that must have been what they were. They were coming from Anti-Crime's direction. Carrying a computer and a stack of files."

"They're _still_ up there?" Sully muttered. "What are they doing now, jerking each other off? They've been up there for three days. Should've been done a long time ago. You should go up and see what they did to the place, Faith."

"Yeeaaaah," Ty said, stretching the word into a sardonic drawl around his toothbrush. "It _is_ something to see, all right." He paused, spat a wad of toothpaste into the sink, and turned. "It's _all_ gone, Faith. Right down to the watercoolers."

"Everything but the fucking wallpaper," Sully agreed. "If they're making it look like the removal operation's still going on, it's gotta be just for show. I don't know what Boscorelli was seeing up there, but whatever it was it really blew the doors off."

_Bosco, _Faith's mind-voice sighed, and she felt a vicious (and very liberating) twist of satisfaction in her gut._ They know it was Bosco. They know Bosco's the rat. _

_Good. _

"I heard it was somebody else," Ty said airily, neatly contradicting both Sully and Faith's unspoken (and rather petty-minded) thought. He spat again and resumed brushing. "Somebody inside Anti-Crime. Word is that IAB had a plant working up there."

Faith's eyes widened, genuinely surprised and thankful to be distracted by another emotion - it put a lid on her nerves, which were still fizzing and crackling. "Really?" She looked over at Sully for confirmation, but the older man's expression suggested that this possibility was new to him as well. Schaeffer had told her few details about exactly how he'd managed to nail an entire Anti-Crime team - he hadn't bothered to treat her to the little sideshow he'd put on for Bosco, and had made no mention of Reyes. He only alluded to an "informant" inside the unit. Faith had simply assumed that he meant Bosco, and although there were several nagging logical problems with that assumption, she never bothered to think on it much.

Probably had something to do with not giving a shit.

Ty nodded. "Yeah. And I'm not just talking about somebody selling out, either. Not just some disgruntled Anti-Crime cop, somebody who didn't like Cruz, something like that - "

"Nobody _liked_ her," Sully muttered, low enough so that only Faith heard him.

"- we're talking an actual undercover _detective_. Sitting right up there in the middle of it all. For as long as six months. Maybe longer."

Sully grunted a laugh. "Slow burn," he muttered. "Sits up there shooting the shit with them while they hang themselves. Then he nails them all at his convenience. Cute."

"Oh, come on, Sul," Ty said around his toothbrush. "You think Cruz and her boys didn't deserve what they got?"

"No. But that doesn't make the idea of cops spying on other cops sit any better with me, Davis. And Bosco - " He looked at Faith. "What the hell was up with him, anyway?"

Faith blinked. "What?"

"What was he thinking, Faith? I mean, I knew he was stupid, but I didn't think he was stupid enough to get mixed up with a bunch of dirty cops."

Faith shrugged, again feeling - and shamelessly indulging - that sense of almost exalted relief, relief that the bull's-eye was indeed painted on Bosco (and Mr. Hypothetical IAB Plant) and not her. "I'm not the one to ask, Sully. He cut me off a long time ago."

"Cruz unleashed her womanly charms on him," Ty said. "That'd be my guess."

Faith balked. Then she uttered a much healthier, much more natural-sounding laugh. Her steel straps were loosening again - this time for good, she thought. She knew Ty was right, of course, that to a certain extent Cruz had controlled Bosco with sex. But "womanly charms" ... applied to Cruz, that still sounded pretty oddball. She would have thought Ty Davis had better taste. "Are you serious?"

Ty shrugged. "She's a very attractive woman, Faith. And that can mess with a guy's judgement. Even the best of us." He glanced over his shoulder. Faith guessed she still must have been looking at him funny because he reddened and shrugged self-consciously. "Seriously, Faith, it can. Hey, look, I'll be the first to admit it. And that's part of why I'm kind of surprised about Cruz, about how things turned out with her. I mean, I knew she was a bit, you know, _unpredictable_, but some of this shit that's been flying around about her -"

"Where are you _getting_ all this shit that's been flying around, by the way?" Sully asked peevishly. "Stuff about IAB plants and six-month investigations. Because I haven't heard anything. All I see is that rat-bastard Schaeffer strutting around here striking heroic poses."

"I pick up stuff here and there," Davis said. He spat one last time and began rinsing his toothbrush off. "Good ol' rumor mill. I'm not saying any of it's true - take it all with a grain of salt, for sure. But what I was saying was, when you hear about stuff like this, it's usually a guy in the middle of it all. It's weird that Cruz was, like, the big ringleader of this whole gang of dirty cops."

"What's your point?"

Ty shrugged. "No point. Just that you don't generally expect it from a woman, do you?"

"Are you kidding me?" Sully said. "Women can be pretty fucking vicious, Davis. When they really set their minds to it they can be worse than us."

Ty burst out laughing. "Whoa-ho! Listen to this guy! Do I detect a hint of bitterness, Sul? Some hot-to-trot honey give poor Sully his walking papers?" He fired an impish smile over his shoulder. "What do you think, Faith? You're not just gonna stand there and take that sexist crap, are you?"

Faith smiled and said nothing. She _should_ say something, she knew, add her own contribution to this little roast, but she could feel hot tears burning at the corners of her eyes again and she was afraid they'd hear it in her tone if she spoke. She thought of Fred. Fred catching her in his awkward one-armed hug from the driver's seat of the truck - and after she'd been all set to turn around and peel him like an orange. And now you had this to consider - she'd been brought back into the fold here without so much as a blink. In here everything still felt so normal, so blessedly _ordinary_. This was the standard-issue locker room bull-session, the light banter that always went on before a shift, that little bit of good-natured verbal sparring that always took the edge off. The state of affairs outside hadn't affected it - it had simply been assimilated _into_ it, made a part of it. Fodder for discussion and an excuse to needle each other.

And they were talking very freely about Cruz, she realized. _She_ was talking freely about Cruz, the woman she had -

_(tried to murder) _

shot, and nobody was making anything out of that.

The straps around her chest were very loose now. And the one around her guts was gone entirely.

"We can take him together, Faith," Ty was saying. "I'll hold him down and you work him over. But stick to the kidneys and groin area." He left the mirror and stood next to Sully. Then, before Sully could react, Ty shot a hand out and cupped his chin. "We wanna keep this face nice 'n _pwetty_, don't we?"

Sully shook him off. "I'm in no mood today, Davis!" he snarled, although Faith doubted there was much in the way of real animosity there; Ty was probably the only cop - the only living human being on Earth, for that matter - who could get away with teasing Sully, and definitely the only one who could occasionally coax Sully into the horseplay, albeit grudgingly. "Besides, you couldn't take me on your best day."

Ty made a little mock-lunge at him. Sully avoided it easily and pointed at Ty's chest. "Looks like you slobbered down your front there a little."

Ty looked down. There was a long, frothy runner of toothpaste on the front of his uniform shirt. All that talking and brushing at the same time hadn't been a good idea. "Aw shit."

"Tell you what," Sully said, clapping him on the shoulder. "While we're out there today I'll find a nice little baby supply store and buy you a bib. You want one with a bunny on it? Maybe a little smiley-smile?"

Ty ignored him, muttering another embarrassed little "Aw shit" as he headed back over to the sink. He wiped unsuccessfully at the stuff on his shirt as he went, then drew a clump of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and started scrubbing.

"Better hustle it up," Sully said, heading for the door. "Swersky's nobody to screw around with today, either." He paused just before he let the door swing shut behind him. "Goes for you too, Faith."

Faith looked down at herself, and realized with renewed embarrassment that she hadn't budged a single inch since she'd first come into the locker room. She was still standing here in her civvies, her bag still where she'd dropped it after nearly breaking Sully's face (his _pwetty_ face, she corrected) with the door.

Faith hurried over to her locker and started unpacking her gear just as Ty turned from the sink and spread his arms. "How's it look now? Noticeable?"

She glanced over her shoulder. There was nothing on Ty's shirt now but a very faint damp patch, and in less than an hour even that would be invisible. Faith made an "O" with her thumb and forefinger.

Ty nodded. "Good. I could already hear the semen jokes, you know? 'Davis has a lil' jizz on his collar.' Don't need that today." He started for the door.

Then he stopped.

Faith sensed it, even though she had her back to him and her head in her locker. She sensed him stop, she sensed him turn, and she sensed it when he started to look at her uncertainly. And she knew what was coming next. She could almost hear the run of his thoughts, and it was the same as it had been with Fred - _what to say, what not to say, should I, shouldn't I, do I want to or not?_

He wanted to, she thought. He wanted to say something, something relevant to the present situation. He probably thought it was necessary. A kind of ritual cleansing, the gruff male version of the welcoming and supportive hug he probably thought another woman would give her. It would be something stilted and awkward, something Ty would think of - innocently - as being comforting, encouraging, even though just coming in here and finding everything unchanged had been more than enough to help her get her bearings back.

He was going to do it. She could feel it coming.

_Don't, Ty. Please don't_. She winced, praying hopelessly that he would pick up the thought, or at least read the gist of it in her body language._ Don't say anything. It's sweet that you feel you have to, but don't ruin this, don't - _

"Hey, Faith ... uh ... Look ... uh ... I just thought I'd let you know that everybody's ... you know, everybody's behind you. I mean ... what I mean is, you don't -"

"Ty -"

"No, no. Please just let me finish, okay? What you had to do to ... to Cruz ... to have to be in a situation like that with another cop, it ... you know, it couldn't have been an easy thing. Hell, I mean, I don't even know what _I'd_ have done -"

"Thanks," Faith said curtly. He had a lot more on the way, of course, but she cut him off anyway. It came out a bit more icy than she would have liked, though, so she turned and offered a smile she hoped looked genuine. "Really, Ty. Thanks."

Ty shifted uncomfortably, sensing her anger anyway and obviously not understanding it. "I just mean that nobody blames you ... for Cruz or for Anti-Crime ... nobody thinks you did anything wrong that night. I mean, Cruz blew her wheels, right? You did what you had to do."

_(I know I did what I had to do. That's it.)_

_(Who are you trying to convince? Because it sounds to me like you're trying to convince _yourself.

Faith nodded mutely. The steel straps had made yet _another_ comeback - not real tight yet, but there all the same. She reminded herself that this was nothing to get all worked up about - it was just Ty's way of trying to be kind. Like Levine and her apple. This cheesy little speech was _Ty's_ apple, that was all. Just trying to be kind in the only way he knew how.

Trouble was, she was sick of people being kind to her, whatever their intentions. She was tired of the _it's good to see you back_'s and _everybody's behind you_'s. She was tired of being _marked_, goddammit, for better or for worse.

And she didn't like how easily people seemed to be reading her. How the hell could Ty know that she was afraid of being blamed for _anything_? It was true, yes, but what right did he have to assume it?

Ty was reading all of _this_, as well - she could see it. She could also see that he wished he'd never opened the subject, and that made her feel even more out of sorts. So she'd made him uncomfortable now. Great. And who's fault was that? Who couldn't just stand back and leave it alone?

She turned back to her locker and pretended to busy herself, rummaging in her bag. Ty paused, probably wondering whether or not to press the issue, then wisely decided not to. She heard him move away, then heard the door open and close.

She began to change into her uniform in silence.

* * *

IV.

And it was the uniform all along. It was the uniform that she'd really been afraid of, she realized, the hurdle that had terrified her the most. Not anything as melodramatic as Swersky and her colleagues deciding to turn their backs and drum her out of the NYPD, or being blamed for Internal Affairs coming in and carving up Anti-Crime like a potroast. It was the uniform from the very beginning. If there was going to be trouble (_trouble_ defined as possibly going into full-blown hysterics again, the way she had at Mercy) she would have expected it to come with putting the uniform on again.

The symbolism of the uniform was, of course, pretty heavy.

Why, the last time she'd been wearing a uniform ...

_Stop. Stop right there. _

Yes, stop right there. That was where she had to be careful, wasn't it? _Right_ there.

Faith allowed herself to look in the mirror only when she had finished completely, only when she had everything on and zipped and buttoned and buckled. And what happened then was nothing short of a subtle miracle; she felt nothing. Nothing at all, boys and girls. Her nerves had calmed. All of her needles had come down out of their red zones and slipped back into the green.

Again, thank God for the small mercies. There was going to be no trouble. No trouble at -

"Hey there, Officer Yokas!" a cheery female voice called from behind her.

Faith screeched. There was no other descriptive term that could be applied to the high and somehow birdlike sound she made - it was a screech through and through. Sasha Monroe had come into the locker room while Faith was busy being fascinated by her own reflection; Faith had heard neither the door opening and closing nor the approaching footsteps, and Sasha had not been at an angle where she would be reflected in the mirror.

"Jeez, I'm sorry," Sasha said as she dropped her own gear on one of the benches. "Didn't mean to come up on you like that. Little edgy, too, huh? That moron convention out front didn't suck you in, did it?"

Faith laughed. _Monkey farm_ from Swersky. Now you had _moron convention_ from Monroe. Faith thought she liked Swersky's better, but what the hell, she'd give Monroe the cake if there was a cake to be awarded. She had taken to Sasha right from the beginning; had, in fact, liked her almost as easily and naturally as she'd disliked Cruz on _their_ first meeting. "No. No, I managed to stay under the radar."

"Lucky you," Sasha said dryly as she began to change. "I didn't. That's why I'm late. Bastards." She winced. "Bite my tongue. You know, I was brought up to be kind to everybody no matter what - love your enemies, right? - but some people make it pretty damned hard. They wanted to know if I knew Cruz. And stupid me, I get all flustered and say yes. Did that ever set them off! What was she like, what was my professional opinion of her, what was my _personal_ opinion of her, did I ever see her sacrificing chickens and eating babies - "

"They _asked_ you that?"

"Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. But would I be surprised if they _did_ ask questions like that? No, I wouldn't." Sasha looked up. "We're riding together today, I take it."

Faith nodded.

"Good. While you were gone I was stuck with Fowler. You know Fowler?"

Faith shook her head.

"Figures. He's usually on First Watch. Temporarily working Third. Only one year with the Department, and I think he was more interested in my ass than he was in the job. Kept brushing up against me - you know, very _casual_-like - and copping himself a nice feel. Cocky about it, too, the little skunk. When I lost my patience and called him on it, you know what he said to me? That he couldn't help it because he had the 'jungle fever.' Can you believe that? Do you think he actually thought that would _work_ on me? _I've got jungle fever_, he says, and I guess my pants are just supposed to fly off."

Faith again could only shake her head. Sasha wasn't just talking fast - she was _machine-gunning_ it. Faith found it hard to keep up, to keep it all straight. Sasha was on edge, too, then. Except her way of dealing with it seemed to be verbal diarrhea.

"Anyway, he's back on his usual shift," Sasha went on. "Good thing, too." At last she stopped and took a deep breath. "Gotta tell you, I _do_ love it when it rains like this, Yokas. Clears the sinuses. Just wish it would keep those jackals outside away."

The door opened and Swersky's voice wafted in. "Hope you're decent, ladies," he said, decorously staying out of view just in case they weren't. "Roll Call in five. And we're running late enough as it is."

"Sure thing, Boss," Sasha called. Then she looked up at Faith. "You all right, Yokas? You look a little peaky."

Faith looked at her sharply. She didn't think Sasha had even been paying the slightest bit of attention to her.

"Yeah," she said, a bit defensively. "I'm fine."

Sasha kept looking at her, and there was something searching in her gaze that Faith didn't like much. But she kept her voice level. "Really, Monroe. I'm fine."

The younger woman shrugged and, to Faith's relief, dropped it. "Better go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Faith started to do just that.

And then stopped short.

Back outside now. Back into the halls, and she seemed to have forgotten all about what was out there. The tension. The IAB detectives running around. The Lions. The Tigers. The Bears.

Oh my.

"I can wait."

But once Sasha had changed and they were out of the locker room, Faith found things were much better now. Not that the tension had _disappeared_, mind you, but it was easier to face with the uniform on, and it was easier with Sasha walking along beside her, and she found she could even look around at what was going on with a more critical eye.

She thought Sully had it pegged. What you had here was a double-edged sword; most cops didn't harbor any great love for Internal Affairs, but most cops were honest, hardworking men and women who would readily admit that the Cruz-types were ultimately counter-productive. It wasn't just that dirty cops smeared the NYPD's good name - there were plenty of practical reasons to weed them out, not the least of which was the issue of community trust. Schaeffer had told her that Cruz and her team had reigned over the neighborhoods they worked like a dime-store gestapo, and Faith believed him. They'd been little more than a street gang themselves, with all the same trappings - status symbols like nickel-plated handcuffs and God only knew what other kind of macho garbage. Probably tattoos - "Five-Five Anti-Crime" on the shoulder, perhaps. Or on the ass. Which was more appropriate, when you thought about it.

They'd gotten what they deserved. Of course they had. In the end they'd gotten only what they'd brought down on their own heads. But here again was that double-edged sword; while most cops had known - or at least suspected - that Anti-Crime was dirty, it did nothing to change the indignant gut-reaction they had to IAB tearing the Five-Five apart under their feet. IAB was, in effect, doing as much harm to the Department's public image as Cruz and her team had. When they saw the media circus and heard the rumors, people on the outside weren't likely to separate Anti-Crime from the rank-and-file. The way it was being handled simply made _everybody_ look bad.

And now that she'd driven the butterflies out of her stomach, Faith found she could be a little pissed about it herself. She thought Sully might also be onto something with that comment about IAB putting on a show. Scare tactics. _Be careful, ladies and gentlemen, and stay on the straight and narrow - 'cuz next time it could be you_. Very subtle.

She still couldn't help but wonder what had justified all of it. With Ty's idea of an undercover detective to chew on, she was doubting more and more that Bosco and his guilty little conscience could have blown things so completely wide-open. IAB hadn't just singled out one or two cops - they had taken _everybody_. Everybody and everything. Overkill? Maybe. _Unnecessary_ overkill? Hard to say. Either Schaeffer was on a witch-hunt, or Anti-Crime's history was a lot darker than either she or Bosco had ever suspected.

Faith was betting on the latter.

But it was all over now. Over and done with and no concern of hers anymore, and if things _were_ different, what of it? Consider it a fresh start. Nunez was free and clear, for whatever that was worth - so Nunez was now the past. And Bosco was the past. Noble was the past. _Cruz_ was the past.

And Schaeffer, thank God, was the past.

* * *

V.

Or maybe not.

"Well, look who it is," Sasha said wryly as they headed for Roll Call. "The Lord High Executioner himself."

Faith followed Sasha's gaze to the end of the hallway and there he was, the one man on God's entire green Earth that she didn't want to talk to or have anything to do with. He was impossible to miss, impossible to mistake for anybody else; big guy, goatee, gray hair, impeccable suit - that was all you needed.

He had cornered Swersky, and Faith felt another surge of empathy for the Lieutenant. Schaeffer was talking to him. Talking _at_ him - the conversation looked mostly one-sided. She could understand none of it - there was no actual yelling going on - but it looked pretty intense. The detective was clearly pissed about something.

_Maybe Swersky didn't hand in his homework on time. _

"Hang back," Faith said, grabbing Sasha's arm ... and wondering again exactly why the idea of running into Schaeffer should bother her so much.

Sasha, of course, didn't understand it either. "What's the problem?"

"I don't want to talk to him."

"He's busy with the Lieu," Sasha said, nevertheless allowing herself to be gently tugged back in the direction of the locker room. "He's not paying attention to us ... whoa, wait ..."

_No. Oh, _hell_ no. You have to be kidding me._

Faith didn't turn. Couldn't bring herself to turn. "What? Is he coming? Don't you dare tell me he's coming, Monroe -"

Sasha winced. "Shit. Sorry, Yokas, he just -"

"Yokas!"

Schaeffer had seen them. Now, incredibly, he was heading right for them, leaving Swersky looking bewildered and angry (although maybe a little relieved) at being so rudely dismissed.

It was amazing, really. Wasn't it amazing? Just how fucking _wrong_ things could go? It _was_ amazing. In a perverse, miserable way, but amazing all the same.

Faith briefly considered simply walking away from him and dismissed the idea as pointless almost immediately - if he meant to talk to her, he would.

_Oh, can it_, she told herself coldly. _He's not out to get you._

But as he drew nearer she couldn't shake the feeling that, in some way, he _was_ coming to get her. At the very least, she got the feeling he was bringing something very bad along with him. _Feeling_ hell - she could _see_ the bad news on him. It was clear in his step and in his expression. Whatever he was arguing with Swersky about might have had something to do with her, and now here she was - just walked right into him. How lucky.

"Go on ahead," Faith murmured. "I'll catch up."

But Sasha stood her ground. Either because she was ready to stand by Faith or because she wanted to see some sparks fly - Faith didn't know her well enough yet to tell which.

Then Sasha leaned in confidentially and whispered, "He kind of looks like a Hulked-out version of Colonel Sanders, doesn't he?"

Faith uttered an involuntary and totally undignified donkey-bray of laughter just as Schaeffer came up to them. The detective cast a brief glance at Sasha, dismissed her, and looked down at Faith with almost theatrical regret.

"Where'd you learn to shoot, Yokas?" he said finally. "Hmm? I mean, where'd you get your Certification? A box of your kid's Cocoa Puffs?"

Faith looked at Sasha helplessly. Wide-eyed, Sasha merely shrugged and raised her hands: _don't ask me_.

She turned back to Schaeffer, put a wicked smile on her lips, and said, "_Excuse_ me?"

She regretted it immediately. It was supposed to come out harsh and indignant, and somehow ended up little more than a squeak. There was something bad here, oh something very ba -

"You just couldn't do a proper job of it, could you?" he said. Then he slapped his forehead dramatically. "What am I thinking? Of _course_ you couldn't! We're talking about a woman who has the luck of Satan himself, after all. If you'd shot her in the _head_ the bullet probably would have just bounced off."

"Cruz?" Faith asked softly, feeling her heart drop into her belly and those goddam hateful straps start to tighten again. _It won't go away_, she thought with an internal, hysterical laugh. _It just won't go away. _She_ won't go away_. "What happened?"

"She's out," Schaeffer said. Then he spread his arms out in a wild shrug and laughed. It was the gesture of a man who has just witnessed an amazing - and yet obviously very phony - magic trick.

Sasha blinked. "Out?"

"She left the hospital. Can you believe that? Just _got up and left_. And nobody saw a goddam thing."

"Wasn't she under guard?" Sasha asked.

"Of course she was under guard!" he cried. "But sweetpea went off and took a forty-minute lunch break. When she gets back, surprise! Resourceful little Maritza is gone."

Faith swallowed, not quite sure what to say, or even if she was expected to say anything. She was not even sure what, precisely, this had to do with her. So Cruz had escaped. It wasn't all that surprising, really. So what?

Sasha shrugged. "She can't have gotten far."

"You wouldn't think so, would you?" Schaeffer said. He ran a weary hand across his forehead, unconsciously aping what Swersky had done back at the main desk. But where Swersky's expression of fatigue had been genuine, Schaeffer's only looked hammy and put on. "Oh, I'm telling you, this has been one wild ride. I suppose Cruz at least scores brownie points for determination. They sent a unit to her apartment - the superintendent said she was there for about an hour, hour-and-a-half maybe. Then she left again." He laughed. "The super's this old crow who thinks Cruz is some kind of neighborhood savior, a good little girl fighting the evils of the ghetto. You'd get a kick out of it, you really would. Old bat talks about her like she was Mother Teresa herself. Mother Teresa with a nine-millimeter on her hip and the body of a stripper. I haven't laughed that hard in years."

"How bad was she hurt, anyway?" Sasha asked, ignoring him. "I heard it was pretty nasty."

"The super said she was a mess when she came in. Wearing a bathrobe - a _bathrobe, _for fuck's sweet sake - and soaked to the skin." He smiled. "I'm not worried. It's not like she's gonna get very far with a shattered shoulder and probably a nice case of pneumonia setting up shop in her lungs."

"Why are you telling me this?" Faith said, hating herself for how timid, how _small_ she was starting to sound. Where, now, was the self-assurance she'd so carefully crafted all week?

Running out through her feet, by the feel of things.

"Because I want _you_ to tell me _this_, Yokas," Schaeffer said, eyes sparkling. "You hear from Boscorelli lately?"

"He and I don't talk anymore," she said shortly. Then it clicked. "Don't waste your time, Detective. He wouldn't be helping her."

"How do you know that? If you're so out of touch with him."

"He wouldn't!" she snapped. Though she had very little fondness left for Bosco and even less in the way of trust, the idea that he could turn around and help that madwoman after everything they'd been through was just too ludicrous. Too _obscene_, if you wanted to get down to it. That he could do such a thing, after all the blood that had been spilled.

_Yeah, blood was spilled. And _you_ were the one who did all the spilling. So is the idea of Bosco helping her really so unthinkable? He was pissed at you for shooting her. Hell, he was _horrified_. Imagine that - Bosco horrified. And who knows - that might have been enough to swing him around to her side again. _

_After all, remember what he was like in the washroom at the hospital. Didn't seem to know _whose_ side he was on._

"His mommy posted his bail," Schaeffer was saying. "He's been staying at her place, but he's not there now. Mommy doesn't know where he is. To tell you the truth, Yokas, I don't think Mommy cares all that much. I don't think he's very high in Mommy's good books right now. Point is, she doesn't know where he went, and neither do we. And Cruz is AWOL. Interesting coincidence."

"Listen," Faith said slowly, wondering why she was going to any length to defend him. Reflex, she supposed. And her unwillingness to believe he could do anything so utterly hateful. "We went over all of this, remember? He came to me, _begging_ me to help him stop what Cruz was trying to do to that Nunez kid, begging me to help him break away from her. That's what he was _like_, Detective. He had to smell the smoke before he knew his own ass was on fire."

Schaeffer threw back his head and laughed. "_Ba_-zing! Right on the money! Man, I might just be starting to enjoy this whole crazy business!"

Faith ignored him. "That bitch lured him up there to that little goon-squad of hers ... I mean ... she got him up there and she _exploited_ him. Just before ... before what happened in that room, she said that she wanted to make him her _star_. Her exact words." Faith's voice suddenly became a frighteningly accurate parody of Cruz: "_He was gonna be my star_. You know what she really meant, Detective?"

Schaeffer nodded impatiently. "Like you said, we went over this already. Cruz wanted to make him into a handy little human shield. She fucks up and he takes the fall." He smiled thinly. "Except of course it didn't work out like that, did it?"

"He would never help her," Faith said flatly.

"Well," Schaeffer sighed. "We'll see. It's not _my_ problem anymore, technically speaking. You just hurry yourself off to Roll Call now, Yokas. You'll all be on the lookout for her today." He grinned. "Who knows? Maybe it'll be _you_ that finds her. Wouldn't that be great? If she's come this far, I doubt she'll go down without a fight. You might get a chance to redeem yourself."

Faith felt the back of her neck prickle. "Excuse me?"

"_Redeem_ yourself," Schaeffer repeated slowly. "You _are_ familiar with the term, right? Means fixing a mistake - usually a shameful one. I'm assuming you completed grammar school."

"Are you really suggesting," Faith said slowly, trying to inject some indignance into her voice, indignance she wasn't even sure she had any right to feel, "that it would have been better if Cruz _died_?"

Schaeffer kept smiling but didn't reply. It was stupid, Faith knew, it just _sounded_ stupid coming from her. It did to her own ears, anyway. She of all people, getting all haughty because Schaeffer was being so casual with a human life. He seemed to know it, too. He held her gaze for a moment or two longer, those unsettling, close-set gray eyes drilling into hers.

"A quick chat, Yokas, if you please," he said finally. His voice had gone oddly quiet; all of a sudden it was devoid of that playful sarcasm that seemed to underline everything he said. He took her gently by the arm and began to lead her off to one side of the hall.

Sasha tried quietly and unobtrusively to follow them. Schaeffer sensed it and immediately swung around, hand raised palm-out, like a traffic cop. "Stop right there, shorty."

Sasha stopped in her tracks.

He made a twirling gesture with his finger. "Turn around. Get thee off to Roll Call."

Sasha stayed right where she was, glaring at him.

"Okay, just stand there and grow some roots, if that's what suits you. But be aware that this is a private conversation. Just between me and Officer Yokas." He turned to Faith, setting himself between her and Sasha and blocking the other woman from view. "All joking aside. Right?"

"I don't have anything left to say to you," Faith said, pulling her arm free. Her voice was husky, almost a whisper. She hated having to look up so far at him; he was a full head-and-a-half taller than she was, and she had no doubt he was used to making his height work to his advantage. "And I _know_ I don't want to hear anything you have to say to me." She paused. Then she added, with a spontaneous, childish defiance that was utterly unlike her: "So fuck off."

"Hear me out, Yokas," Schaeffer said softly, unperturbed. "Hear me out, and listen very carefully." He leaned in very close, and when he spoke his breath tickled her ear maddeningly.

"Cruz never pulled her gun on you at all, did she?"

Faith stared up at him expressionlessly. Her spine seemed to have frozen. Half a dozen random and half-glimpsed thoughts ripped through her mind. One of them was _prison_.

This was the bad news, then. The bad news she had sensed on him. Not Cruz slithering out of Mercy hospital. _This_.

She realized that she had begun to tremble. She didn't think it wasn't very bad yet, definitely not enough to be visible - it was very specific, very fine, a kind of low-yield electric charge running through her body.

And her voice seemed incapable of getting any higher than that scratchy whisper. "What?"

"This is strictly off the record, you understand," he said softly. His voice barely qualified as a murmur and yet somehow each syllable came through with perfect clarity. "Boscorelli stuck up for you, and Noble's pleading ignorance, but from the start I have had a hard time believing that even Cruz would try to take something from another cop at gunpoint. She had a psych evaluation only six months ago, you know. And while it showed her to have a mild personality disorder (which is just a fancy way of saying arrogant bitch) it more or less checked out - Maritza Cruz may be a lot of things, but crazy isn't one of them. Nor is she stupid. She's an arrogant bitch of the highest possible caliber, and she's self-driven almost to the point of obsession, but all of that doesn't add up to being dumb enough to point a gun at a cop."

Faith continued to stare blankly at him. Or at least _blankly_ was her best and most optimistic guess - she no longer had any idea of what her facial expression might be conveying, and Schaeffer wasn't giving her any clues. Her head felt suddenly very light. The trembling was still confined to that low-key thrumming in her limbs, but her heart was hammering hard enough in her chest now to rattle her teeth.

"Now, don't look at me like that, Yokas - you don't have anything to worry about. _My_ guess is that the truth isn't all that far from your story anyway. My guess is that Cruz came into that room and started tossing her weight around. Making threats. Maybe against you and Boscorelli both. Threats to trump up a few disciplinary charges, maybe. Threats to nail you on a B&E charge for being there. No, you don't have to answer - this isn't an interrogation. We're past that. This is just me telling you that I _understand_. I understand why you did it. She needed to be _stopped_, Yokas. We were in the process of stopping her, and we did, but you couldn't know that at the time, could you? All you saw was Cruz standing in front of you, and you _knew_ her, didn't you? You knew she was out of control. You knew she'd crossed the line one too many times, trying to railroad that poor bastard Nunez. And you thought, _I have to stop her before she really hurts somebody_. And for that - "

Schaeffer broke off suddenly.

Then, without even turning around, he shouted: "_What the fuck did I just tell you, shorty? BACK OFF!_"

Faith and Sasha both jumped as if goosed, Sasha more so - she had been sidling closer and closer to where Faith and the detective were standing, trying to hear what was being said. She hadn't, as far as Faith could tell, made so much as a whisper of sound, and yet Schaeffer had heard her anyway.

Sasha drew back hastily, eyes widening at the naked viciousness of the outburst.

Once he was sure Sasha had been cowed, Schaeffer turned to Faith again, picking up his gentle (if somewhat urgent) tone and his train of conversation as if nothing had happened.

"And for that, my hat's off to you. If it were anyone else, Yokas - _anyone_ - you _would_ be going down for attempted murder. But Cruz is a special case. I know more about her than almost anybody else in this precinct, and I could smell something like this coming for years. Except I was always afraid she'd take an innocent bystander or two with her. You did right, Yokas, you really did. Sometimes you need to fight the enemy on her own terms, isn't that so? I just wish that when you decided to put her on ice, you'd have followed through." He stepped back and smiled at her, voice rising to a more natural tone. "If you run across her again, though, you will. Won't you?"

Faith stared at him, utterly thunderstruck.

And then she felt it all come down.

It was simple and quick and when it came it came with no fanfare or emotional pyrotechnics, no hysterical breakdown - she just felt it go with a kind of unremarkable mental pop, the way she'd felt her panic pop just after nearly bashing Sully with the locker room door. Everything she'd been built up, everything she'd been telling herself, all of that blustery self-denial about _getting beyond_ it, all the self-serving psychobabble about work being good therapy, all the reassurances that she was the same and her _place_ was the same, _all_ of it - it all came down in the space of one second, breaking apart and collapsing in a meaningless pile like the house of cards it was, and had been since the beginning.

And all by some rat-squad detective who didn't even know her. By a man who didn't even _know_ her ... and yet had somehow intuited the entire truth.

_Sometimes you need to fight the enemy on her own terms, isn't that so? _

To destroy thy enemy you must become thy enemy. Why, of _course_ it was so.

Sasha heard the last line of Schaeffer's little speech, and though Faith doubted she could have understood the meaning, she caught the change in Faith's expression and turned on the detective. "Hey! What the hell is wrong wi - "

"You bastard," Faith overrode her softly, but there was no menace in it, no strength. She suddenly felt so terribly weak, so alone and disconnected, so completely outside herself.

"Get out of here, Schaeffer," Sasha said coldly.

As usual Schaeffer was completely unmoved. And as usual he was impossible to read. If he sensed that he'd struck a nerve (hell, he'd struck a _fault_-line) he gave no indication. He just shrugged and started to walk away, the subject apparently no longer of any interest to him. Without turning, he raised a hand into the air, making a pistol out of his thumb and forefinger, and called over his shoulder: "Shoot straighter next time, Yokas."

Faith didn't hear him. Instead, she swooned. She had never done such a thing as _swoon_ in her entire life - any more than she'd ever suffered a panic attack - but she swooned now. There seemed to be no blood left in her head, and it was another of those small mercies that there was a bench running along the wall beside them. Faith staggered two steps to her left and sank down onto it just as her knees unhinged. She was terrified that she was going to actually _faint_, and she felt her stomach heave over on itself, painfully, _exactly_ the way it had when she'd knelt next to Cruz in that room.

She put her head down and leaned forward, arms dangling between her knees, breathing slow and deep until the nausea passed. The only thing worse than fainting right now would be to puke in the hallway. And all that she needed for that to happen was to think about ...

_About the blood, right? Remember the blood? The _smell_ of it? It was everywhere, remember? Absolutely everywhere. In places you'd never even _think _the backsplatter could get to. All over the floor, up the walls, all over the couch. Noble, you might recall, said something about it looking like a slaughterhouse. And it did. And there's you, looking like the butcher. Blood all over you, your jacket, pants, your _hands

And through it all there was the smell of it, the smell of gun smoke, Cruz bleeding, Cruz vomiting all over her, Cruz attaining that muddy kind of semi-consciousness when the paramedics were hauling her away, when she started screaming -

Faith saw Sasha move into the frame of her peripheral vision and immediately fixed on her as a kind of life-ring, driving everything else out of her head. Instead of sitting next to her on the bench, the younger woman squatted down on her haunches in front of her, hunkering down to eye level the way a mother will when trying to comfort a crying child. The way Holly Levine had that night at Mercy - Holly Levine and her dreamy, watery eyes and lilting voice. Sasha's face was full of that same honest concern, but there was also a look of utter confusion and something that might have been outright fear.

Sasha had no idea. No idea at all.

_Now she'll offer me an apple_, Faith thought muddily, and laughed. It was high and humorless and somehow, about halfway through, it turned into a sob.

"Hey," Sasha said hesitantly, flustered. "Hey, look, Yokas, whatever that stupid hump said to you ..."

"He's right," Faith heard herself say, not so much in answer but more just to confirm the truth to herself. To hear it out loud, the final admission spoken in her own voice, which seemed to be coming back at her from down a long tunnel.

She looked up at Sasha. Smiled. Shrugged. "He's right."

"Who? Him? Schaeffer? Hey, Yokas, don't listen to - "

"I shot her, Sasha," Faith said hoarsely. She really had no idea it was coming until it was out. Then, helplessly, she just kept right on going. "He's right. He really is. I just ... she was standing there, and I thought ... I decided it was time to put an end to it. Put an end to _her_. She didn't even _do_ anything, and I just ... I took Noble's gun and I _shot_ her."

Sasha's eyes widened. What had begun as a look of mild apprehension now suddenly became outright horror. She glanced around to see if they were being watched. They weren't. Yet.

"Yokas ... Faith, do you ... are you sure you really want to be telling me this? _Out here_?"

"I was trying to kill her," Faith continued as if she hadn't heard. "I hated her and I _wanted_ to kill her ... for what she did to Bosco." She barked a wild little laugh. "That's where he's wrong. That's where _I_ was wrong."

"Yokas, I don't underst -"

"I hated her for what she turned him into," Faith said. She was crying but her voice had somehow become eerily conversational, as if this was no more than a dry political discussion enjoyed over a cup of coffee. "That was the only reason. I didn't care what she did to that Nunez kid or to anyone else. And afterwards ... after, when she was kneeling there bleeding, I _loved_ it. Every _second_ of it. The look on her face ..." - Faith grinned savagely in spite of herself - "It was so _satisfying_. She knew. Oh, she _knew_ we'd beaten her, and I wanted Bosco to finish her off. I remember I thought something like _blow her fucking head off, Bosco_, just like that, just like we were partners again, like we'd scored some kind of big righteous victory together even though it was just a ... a filthy mistake, and I ... I kept telling myself that she was ..."

"_Look_," Sasha said urgently, taking her by the shoulders. "You can't ... you can't be _telling_ me this, Yokas. I don't even know - "

"Aren't you listening?" Faith snarled, shaking herself free. "I _loved_ it. I tried to _murder_ somebody, Monroe. And I _enjoyed_ it. I _got off_ on it. And you know what's funny? Nobody seems all that surprised, do they? Everybody's cool with it. I was _worried_ about that, you know. Like, how would people treat me? And you know what? Everybody's cool. Just _so_ cool with it, with me shooting her. You and Ty and Sully and Swersky and that IAB son of a bitch. It was like they thought it was inevitable. Cruz was out of control. Cruz crossed the line. Cruz needed some serious killin', and who better to do it than me, right?"

She stopped abruptly, the rant at last catching in her throat as another sob overtook and squashed it.

Sasha glanced around again. "Look - I'm not gonna question what you did, okay?" she said after a moment's consideration. "I don't know what that asshole said to you, but I'm not gonna pass judgement on you because I wasn't there. Just let me ask you this - Cruz _was_ armed, right?"

"Yeah, but - "

"She drew on you? Had her gun _in_ her hand?"

"Yeah, but she - "

"No _buts_. If Cruz was standing there with her gun in her hand, then as far as I'm concerned, she was asking for it. Stupid thing for her to do. She walked right into it, Yokas." Sasha smiled a bit. "You know that old line, right? 'Give me a reason.' Well, she gave you a reason. You didn't know what she was gonna do or not do. I mean, it's not like you shot a handcuffed suspect or something. "

"The weak got what was coming."

Sasha's brow wrinkled. "What?"

Faith looked blearily up at her and smiled, a smile that made Sasha draw away a bit.

_Thinks I'm nuts. Thinks I'm totally nuts. How'd Ty put it? "Cruz blew her wheels." That's what Monroe's thinking right now. Yokas has blown her wheels. All four of them._

_What a mess. God help me, what a mess._

"You said that to me," Faith rasped. "Just after Noble killed that biker. You said Cruz was weak, and the weak always get what's coming. So cool and so sure. I guess that one really stuck with me."

Sasha smiled sourly. "Well, mom always did say I was a good judge of character. And Cruz did bring this all on herself."

Faith shook her head. "But that's not it. It's not about the technicalities, it's not about what the textbooks or the Academy instructors say. You're not _listening_, Monroe - I tried to kill somebody in cold blood, and I _enjoyed_ it."

Sasha sighed. "I don't know what to say to that. I'm sorry. But the fact is, from what I can see, Cruz pushed you and pushed you and pushed you, and if you went a bit crazy, I'd say that's understandable. I don't know you well enough to be giving you advice, maybe, but I'm gonna tell you right now - don't let her do this to you."

Faith nodded dutifully. She was barely listening.

"She's gone for good," Sasha went on. "They'll catch her again and she'll go to jail and nobody around here's ever gonna see her again. Not you, not me, not anybody. She's history. So ask yourself this - do you want to let her win? You want to let her take that away with her?"

Faith looked down at her hands, which were now balled into tight, white-knuckled fists. This was familiar territory. All of the very same comfortable lies that she had been telling herself since the beginning. And all of it so much meaningless shit. She realized that she had hoped for something more from Sasha, something different, something _new_. Some fresh revelation, spoken with the same cool certainty as _the weak always get what's coming_. Something to make it all better.

Eventually, Sasha said: "If you want to take the day off, I'm sure the Lieu won't have a problem."

Threaded delicately under that sentence was: _And neither will I_.

Faith nodded and got slowly to her feet. Time to rewind the tape. Do it all over again, only nice 'n backwards this time. Back to the locker room. Back into civvies. Back home, where she would put her gear in a corner and then go sit on the couch. Maybe with a bucket of Ben & Jerry's in her lap and a big ol' spoon to go with it. Watch some TV.

_But not the news. _

Oh _no_. Not the news.

She looked around again, and for the last time allowed herself to fully take in and feel the strangeness here. The _coldness_. It was intense, yes. Still very intense. But ultimately not very dramatic, because she knew there was nothing permanent in it. In a week, two at most, everything would fall back into the normal routine again. It would _have_ to. The surgery was done, and as painful as it had been, the patient would now have to get back on their feet. The hustle and bustle would return, the circus outside would go away and the one inside would return, the one made up of beat cops and detectives and lawyers and hookers and drug dealers and psychiatric out-patients. Everyday hustle and bustle. You bet.

Faith didn't know when she'd be back to see it.

Or let's not kid ourselves, ladies and gentlemen - she didn't even know if she'd be back at all.

"Tell the Lieu for me, would you?" Faith said over her shoulder as she headed back in the direction of the locker room. Her voice was pinched, breathless. The steel straps were back. "Tell him I'm gonna need a few days. But tell him that I'm gonna come talk to him about it myself just as soon as I get changed."

"Yokas -"

Faith didn't turn, didn't falter. She was moving fast now, trotting along as fast as she could in the direction of the locker room. And she could feel those belts squeezing her again. Some serious _deja vu_ here, folks. _Deja vu_ all the way. Everything was perfectly parallel to what it had been only ten minutes ago, history repeating itself in reverse. "_Please_, Monroe. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure, but - "

But Faith had rounded the corner and was gone.

* * *

VI.

The locker room was empty and quiet but for a solitary female cop who was just coming out of one of the bathroom stalls. Faith passed her on the way in with barely a glance, but she caught enough in her peripheral sense to suggest that the young woman was a bit shaken up. Faith, of course, had no idea that this was Cruz's erstwhile police guard - sweetpea, as Schaeffer had christened her. Sweetpea was actually Probationary Officer Sarah Thompson, and she had caught four different shades of blue hell from the burly detective only thirty minutes ago. Probationary Officer Sarah Thompson had wanted nothing more than to be a cop since she was about ten years old, and she was almost sick with terror at the prospect of losing her job only a few days out of the Academy. Most reasonable people would have said Cruz's escape couldn't possibly have been considered Thompson's fault, but Schaeffer was, to put it lightly, inconsolable. And inconsolable people are seldom reasonable.

Probationary Officer Sarah Thompson was currently searching for a hole she might crawl into and die.

Despite her need to get as far away from the Fifty-Fifth Precinct as possible, Faith could have sympathized.

But Probationary Officer Thompson left the room and Faith went straight over to her locker, and that was the closest the two of them ever got. Faith began to change out of her uniform, the process thoughtless and mechanical and devoid of symbolism. By now Sasha would be giving Swersky the news, although whether she would tell him about the confrontation with Schaeffer or the miniature freakout afterwards was another question. Faith was betting _no _and_ no_ on that one; Sasha seemed the discreet type. But Sasha's bearing and tone would express enough worry - probably not even intentionally - so that Swersky would soon come looking for her.

Faith finished up fast and closed her locker.

For the last time.

She tried to push the idea out of her mind and wasn't all that surprised when it slid right back in again. It _was_ possible that Fred had been right after all, that she had jumped back into the stream too soon and just needed a few more days to get her head together and let everything else blow over. Nine years she had done this job, nine years she had - for the most part - enjoyed it, and she liked to think that in all of those nine years she'd done it to the best of her abilities. She had, at the very least, done it with the best of intentions. She'd _helped_ people. That was why she did it. Why she loved it.

She helped people.

_(Blow her fucking head off, Bos)_

Oh yeah ... _that_ was how it went, wasn't it? _That_ was what she'd thought when Cruz was bleeding in front of them and struggling to keep herself vertical. Blow her fucking head off, Bos. Not _Bosco_ but _Bos_. Pronounced _Boz_. That warm and cozy casual nickname.

And throughout the actual act itself she had been thinking about her family. When her finger had curled around the trigger of Noble's ridiculous antique pistol, when she had watched the sights line up over Maritza Cruz's heart, she had thought of Charlie and Emily and Fred. _What-would-they-do-and-where-would-they-go_ kind of stuff. But it had been distant, unimportant, questions with no more gravity behind them than what she might decide on for dinner that night. The only important thing had been those gun-sights, bracketing the spot that held Cruz's life and the sum of all she ever was. Right in the heart, that was where it was supposed to go. Center-mass. The kill-shot.

And there had been nothing in Faith's own heart but flat murder.

_I can change, though, _she thought, closing her eyes and putting her sweaty forehead against the cool metal of the locker._ Isn't that the way it goes? First you admit you have a problem, and then you change._

_You can _change an answering voice cawed back immediately. _You can _change_ because you have a _problem_! What a hoot! Put it up there on your New Year's resolutions, why don't you? This year I promise I will be more patient with my kids, cut down on the potato chips and twinkies, and stop trying to murder people. Beautiful._

She didn't want to give it up. She really didn't. She thought she really didn't.

But it was possible that it had gone too far, that nine years had brought her to a place where she never could have imagined ending up. It was also possible that it was her own fault, that she'd missed something crucial along the way. She hadn't been vigilant enough in taking proper care of herself. Mental care. _Spiritual_, even. And as a result the job had done something to her.

The vets all talked about that _something_, of course. The grizzled vets, the _Sullys_, they all said the same thing, often with varying degrees of regret; the job changes you. It hardens you. _Desensitizes_ you. It does something to you there might not even be a word for, changes you in some fundamental way that can drive a wedge between you and the rest of the world, the people you love. And the bitch of it, these vets would say, is that you didn't feel it happening. It was a process of years, decades, and you didn't know you were there until you were there.

It was possible that such a thing had happened to her. Nine years she had done it and loved it and yet it had produced somebody else. As a kind of ... _side effect_. And it was somebody Faith found she didn't much like. Somebody she was deeply afraid of. Somebody who, in perfect pulp-crime-novel, action-movie fashion, shot first and asked the questions later.

And she _really_ hadn't been able to see any of this before? _Christ_.

_Oh, you saw it all right. Just didn't want to face it. Not until you saw how easily everybody else could smell it on you. Not until that IAB fuckhead came along and _made_ you face it. Shit, he didn't just make you face it - he made you get down on your hands and knees and _eat_ it._

_You were right about one thing, at least, honeybunch - you experienced a moment of clarity._

_No, _she thought back. Almost groveling. Groveling to _herself_, tears spilling down her cheeks. _I can change. I can still do this job and not let it get any worse. I can turn it around. _

And yet the logic of that just didn't hold up to scrutiny, did it? If it took putting that bullet in Cruz to open her own eyes to what she might be turning into - and if it had taken _Schaeffer_ to drive the point home - then maybe it was too _late _to turn things around. Where would she be in a year? In two? In five? In ten?

What was it Monroe had said a minute ago? _It's not like you shot a handcuffed suspect or something_. Maybe that was where she was headed.

_I can't give this up. This is my life. My _life.

_Blow her fucking head off, Bos_, the other side of her mind returned coolly.

Faith abruptly pulled back and drove her right fist into the locker with every ounce of strength she had, buckling the flimsy metal of the door and breaking two of her fingers. She felt the jolt all the way up the arm; she would not be able to lift it higher than shoulder-height for a week.

She swung around in a kind of blind fog, snatching up her duffel bag. She used her right hand to do it. The right hand with two broken fingers - the ring and the pinky. She screamed. Dropped the bag. Sobbed. Leaned down and picked it up again, this time with her left hand, and then headed for the door.

Never coming back. She knew that with absolute certainty now.

Never coming back.

* * *

End of Part I 


	11. Chapter 7: Cruz

**A Moment of Clarity **  
_by Cipher44_

**Part II**

* * *

"I don't deserve this."

- Gene Hackman

_Unforgiven_

* * *

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

- Clint Eastwood

_Unforgiven_

* * *

Chapter 7

_Cruz_

I.

The trip has been paid for out of her own pocket, right down to the brand-new pair of skis she bought for Lettie, who has never set foot on a slope in her entire life. You can _rent_ skis, of course - and maybe that would be a smarter thing to do, what with Lettie being a beginner - but buying new feels _right_ somehow, more in tune with what you might call the spirit of the trip.

This is her awkward, hesitant attempt at bonding with her little sister. She's never been good at stuff like this, but Lettie is seventeen and Maritza is getting desperate because it's _ice_ now - crystal-fucking-_meth_. Cigarettes when she was twelve, pot when she was fifteen, busted for coke possession the following year, and now ice, the worst of them all. And Lettie doesn't snort it - she _smokes_ it. Maritza, who has read all the literature by now, knows why - it's a better way to get high.

It is also an exceptionally _deadly_ way to get high. Maritza is badly shaken and very scared. She needs to get through to Lettie but she has no idea how; she has so much working against her. There's almost a decade between them, and the fact that she's a cop - a cop who has actually locked up a few of Lettie's lowlife "friends" - doesn't help.

These days, their fights would be better described as balls-out screaming matches, driven along by Lettie's arsenal of shrill, defensive teenage cliches: _You don't know me! My friends understand me! I can take care of myself!_ And so on. This adolescent horseshit makes Maritza want to puke, but fighting only hardens Lettie's resolve and drives her even further away. The elder Cruz sister recognizes this for the vicious circle it is, but she's as helpless against her own temper as Lettie is against hers. Maritza doesn't know _what_ to do, and that makes her even more furious.

So she takes Lettie skiing.

She starts simple, teaching Lettie the ins and outs. The kid's sullen and disagreeable at first; it seems something as whitebread as skiing just isn't _street_ enough for tough little Lettie. Or so she thinks. Before long, she's into it. She's terrible at it - her arms and legs all seem to have different ideas about which direction to go in - but she's into it. Forget trying to be a cop with her, forget the almost painfully patronizing lectures, and you avoid the fights before they start. Just be a big sister again. It sounds like one of those goddam cheesy _Partnership for a Drug-Free America_ commercials, but if it works it works, and to hell with tough love.

Maritza spends most of the day watching Lettie flail gracelessly around the kiddie slopes, feeling better than she has in ages. The sudden lack of tension between them is so abrupt and so extreme that it's almost a physical thing; for the first time in three years - perhaps as many as six - she can breathe easy.

And then, while the two of them are taking their skis off for the day, it happens. Lettie, bent over and fumbling with her boots, suddenly loses her balance and falls flat on her face in the snow.

Quick as a cat she's back up on her feet, her face twisted into the expression her older sister has come to _loathe_ these past few years; instant regression from seventeen to a petulant six. It's ugly and embarrassing and maddening all at the same time.

"You tripped me!"

Maritza sighs wearily. "No, I didn't." And she didn't, either - how could she have tripped Lettie when they'd both been standing perfectly still? Stupid.

"_You fucking TRIPPED me!_" Lettie shrieks, and then launches herself at her sister. She's a tiny girl (currently tipping the scales at a proud one hundred-and-six, and she'll get a lot lighter in the next few years) but she's pissed and Maritza isn't expecting it. Lettie hits her with a full-on flying tackle.

The wind is driven from Maritza's lungs, and as they go down in a tangle she is hit with the bleak - though not terribly surprising - realization that nothing has really changed at all. Lettie's the same as she ever was, hot-tempered and defensive and resentful, looking for something, _anything_ to pick a fight over.

Maritza wonders if she'll have to hurt her. _Physically_ hurt her. She thinks maybe she will. And it won't be self-defense, either. She thinks it might just be time to throw down the gloves and, at last, try to _beat_ some sense into her.

Then Maritza gasps and goes rigid with shock as Lettie scoops a heaping handful of snow down the back of her parka. Lettie is laughing now - cackling that demented cackle she's practiced since she was about five - but there doesn't seem to be any real animosity behind it, and a moment later Maritza gets another icy shot of snow down her back.

It's been a long time since Lettie cut the shit and lightened up. So long, in fact, that Maritza didn't even recognize a play-fight when she saw it coming.

And suddenly they're both laughing and wrestling and trying to snow each other like a couple of kids, until finally they both lie panting and red-faced in the snow, staring up at the sky. This isn't the way things really are between them at all - not anymore, not ever again - but right now Maritza is ready to lose herself in the illusion. She realizes she's grinning helplessly, sloppily. Melting snow trickles over her neck, down her back. In the euphoria of the moment she can really believe that Lettie is going to be okay, that things are going to turn around, and of course this is it, right here, this is the last time she will ever see her sister vital and healthy.

In the end Maritza washes her hands of Lettie and walks away. In the end it hurts too much to do anything else. Of course she can't _admit_ this, to herself or to anyone - she tells herself that it's only because Lettie is a big girl now, that she makes her own decisions and must deal with the consequences accordingly. But Maritza is a cop and she knows bullshit when it's being shoveled in her face - even when it's herself doing the shoveling. Underneath it all she knows that she's weak, that it's her own weakness, her own fear, her own unwillingness to face the inevitable crash that makes her turn her back. It's easier to cut Lettie off, as if that could somehow absolve her of her responsibility. She walks away from Lettie and tells herself it has to be this way, for _both_ of them it has to be this way, and still she knows that she has left her sister to those bastard parasites who feed on her and exploit her and abuse her. Maritza hates herself all the same, she knows that Lettie will die alone and that it will, in part, be her fault.

And when Lettie comes back into her life for the last time, when God or Fate or pure, idiot chance allows Lettie to actually die in her older sister's arms, Maritza Cruz knows that any peace of mind she can take from that is far more than she deserves.

* * *

The passage over from sleep to consciousness came in two stages, starting in a kind of slow, climactic rise and ending in a swift and brutal drop into the waking world; if Cruz had been in any shape to care about formulating metaphors, she might have thought of biking up a steep hill in tenth gear, gasping and panting with effort ... then hitting the unexpected peak and plummeting helplessly down the other side like a torpedo.

It was a confusing business, too, because she awoke into pouring rain, and for several seconds believed that she was still on the ski slope. Water poured down the back of her neck in little rivulets, but it wasn't melting snow. She was freezing through and through, as well - an even nastier kind of bone-deep chill than the one she'd felt after the taxi had deposited her in front of her apartment building. Coldness and _wet_ness - this _had_ to be the ski slope. Had to be. She was lying on the slopes and Lettie was lying somewhere beside her, and at any moment the girl would get her second wind and start stuffing snow down her back or in her face again. For a few short seconds, this logic fit.

That was the slow, climactic rise.

The fast and brutal drop into consciousness started when she felt what was under her ass (which had gone to sleep - both cheeks were numb and tingling). She was sitting - slouched in an awkward sprawl, really - on a hard public bench. Hard, wet wood. So it wasn't the ski slope. And Lettie wasn't beside her. That was because Lettie was dead. Dead and over three months in her grave, to be precise, and Maritza ought to know that by now because she had watched them plant Lettie with her own eyes.

No more snow-fights for Lettie.

She came awake the rest of the way in a sharp, reflexive jolt that almost tumbled her off the bench and startled an odd, gurgling cry of pain out of her in the bargain. Her head had been lolling off to the side and her neck had gone terribly stiff; the pain of this sudden, jarring movement tried to mix with the pain from her shoulder, couldn't compete, and was swallowed by it.

Groaning softly, Cruz waited for it to taper off a bit and then tried to straighten up. There was a very distinct pop from her neck and another brief flare of pain, again quickly snuffed out under the wound's now-constant background howl. She became aware of something wet and stringy and unpleasant draped over her eyes and the bridge of her nose, tickling at the corner of her mouth. Her garbled mind immediately and outlandishly insisted that she had, at some point, been covered in seaweed. Two heartbeats later she realized that it was her own hair. She raked it back with her fingers, a habitual post-shower motion that sprayed a fine mist of droplets behind her, a gesture that might once have looked rather sexy and was now only blunt and feeble and exasperated.

And her mouth was full of something. _Something_. Something awful, something that was thick and sticky and foul.

Cruz spat and produced a jellylike wad of half-congealed blood. The bites on her tongue must have split open. That, or she had bitten it again. She found she didn't care much one way or the other. Her head was throbbing too badly to sweat the small stuff, a sunken knot of dull, nauseating pain above and just slightly to the left of the bridge of her nose. She deliberately turned her face up into the rain, gasping as the icy water pelted her face and slipped between her lips, mind flashing on the ski slope again as the last rotten scraps of the dream dissolved around her.

She had fallen asleep. That was bad. Worse was that she'd somehow managed it while sitting in a backwrenching sprawl on an uncomfortable public bench in the middle of a teeming downpour.

On the heels of that realization came another, one notch above horrifying:

_Jesus Christ, I've missed him_.

Cruz looked up sharply, momentarily forgetting the pain and stiffness, horribly sure that she _had_, she _had_ missed him, she had slipped under at exactly the wrong time and let Aaron Noble get away on her.

She hadn't missed him, though. His battered Mercedes was still in the parking lot across the street.

Cruz sat back and exhaled. Fate had forgiven her. With a few recent (and rather drastic) exceptions, Fate usually did. But it was still a bad slip. A _very_ bad slip. Almost lost the whole fucking show right there.

But _Christ_, she _hurt_. She hurt, and how easy _was_ it to keep yourself alert and on your toes when you were hurting like this all the time?

Cruz blinked water out of her eyes and looked down, her gaze catching on a small square of white standing out against the dark slate of the sidewalk. It was the photograph. The photograph had slipped out of her hand when she went under and had come to rest on the ground between her feet.

It was the only picture she'd taken on that ski trip, and the only existing photo of both Cruz sisters together as grown women. Lettie had still been a year shy of her age of majority, of course (and she never really grew all the way up anyway), but the adult terminology still fit. Because in the picture you could see a hint of the woman she might have been - hard-livin', trash-talkin' gangsta-bitch was nowhere in sight. She was on the left, grinning sunnily at the camera, as if all was well with the world and there wasn't a single reason to believe that would ever change. Maritza was on the right, but she was wearing only the barest hint of a smile; apparently she did not share the same level of enthusiasm as her sister. It didn't look _forced_, exactly, but there was something distinctly _measured_ about it - just enough smile so as not to ruin the picture.

Cruz kept trying to remember exactly what she might have been thinking in that moment and couldn't do it. The photo had been a spontaneous thing, she remembered that much, because her camera had gathered dust at the bottom of a tote-bag until they were just getting ready to leave. She'd cornered a resort employee at the last minute and asked him to take a shot of her and Lettie together. So it _had_ been her idea all the way - she remembered grabbing Lettie by the elbow and lining her up for the shot while the employee figured out her cheap Nikon. He was a crater-faced canteen attendant, flustered and tongue-tied at being approached by this hot little snow-bunny with the dark eyes, and he'd tripped all over himself to please her. He sighted them with the camera and, perhaps losing his nerve to say something witty, simply cried a lame "smile big now!"

Lettie had followed the order and offered up a toothy one ... but Maritza had not. Maritza had turned her lips into something that probably felt okay at the time but ended up looking pallid and humorless and ironic on film - something just a bit too Sergeant Cruz for comfort. It was as if, at the precise second when the shutter clicked and the flashbulb went off, this slightly younger version of herself had suddenly fallen off the high. The high that both of them had ridden the whole weekend, the high that had started when Lettie jammed a handful of snow down her parka. Bullshit. All bullshit. Cruz the Elder knew it - Cruz the Younger would very soon. They would arrive back home and it would all start again, Lettie fucking up and Maritza following along behind her picking up the pieces, grimly ignoring the abuse the miserable little twat would pour back on her by way of thanks. You can take the girl out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blah.

Cruz picked the photo up daintily by the corner and shook it off. Until recently it had resided safely in its frame on the mantle in her living room. Now naked and defenseless, it had accumulated a fair amount of wear and tear. But it was tough, and even after this trip into the gutter it was still salvageable and still very recognizable - what you had here was one _fuck_ of a quality print. Props to the good people at Kodak.

She laid the photo aside on the bench and looked around. The picture was at least partially to blame for the slip; she'd been looking at it, focusing on it just for something to focus on, perhaps citing it as a firm reminder that her reasons for putting herself through this torture were still quite sound. And at some point she'd simply been bushwhacked by her own exhausted brain. Consciousness had melted into unconsciousness and that fucking ski trip had followed her down, weaving itself right back into that same old tired thread of guilt and shame and stupid grief.

But it was dark out here. She recalled it being dusky when she first sat down here, and now it was _dark_. So how long _had_ she been out?

She looked at the watch she'd taken from her bedside table that afternoon and saw that it was twenty-two minutes after nine.

Then, still looking at her outstretched hand, she turned it palm-down and held it there.

There was a very noticeable tremble.

_Just the cold_, she thought numbly. _That's all. I'm soaked and I'm freezing._

The cold, yes. That, coupled with the fact that her right arm was now pulling double duty. Only natural that the muscles would start to feel a little wobbly, the same way her legs had felt a bit unsteady after she pulled herself out of her hospital bed. But she'd still been able to stand and walk, hadn't she? Sure had. It'd been no problem then, and it was no problem now.

Cruz curled her fingers into a fist, tightening up the muscles and tendons in her arm, trying to get it under control.

She couldn't do it. And flexing only made the tremble more pronounced.

This was stupid. This was fucking _stupid_. It should be easy, no effort required, and yet it was sapping her strength. _Sapping_ her. She could feel it, and a moment later she had to give in and relax.

_Okay, just a bit of shakiness in the limbs. Nothing to get all worked up about._

And yet she went back at it almost immediately, willing the goddam hand to steady up, feeling a kind of drowsy, half-conscious fear slip over her, fear that she could really have lost this much physical self-control in such a short time. She held the hand up in front of her like a dog favoring a sore paw, squinting at it, unaware that her tongue had crept out of the corner of her mouth in a small child's display of intense concentration, trying to hold it steady, _willing_ it steady.

Couldn't be done.

Cruz stared at it, gritting her teeth, fear turning to hot, petulant anger at this physical betrayal. Her own weakness disgusted her. It disgusted her because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she could have been hurt in this way, that she could have been _crippled_ in this way, and it was that one simple and mostly unremarkable truth that kept hitting her; she was _crippled_. Not _disabled_. Not _physically challenged._ _Crippled_. Fucking down-and-dirty _crippled_. She kept being smacked rudely in the face by her new limitations, and the discovery process was still ongoing. She kept trying to _do_ things, working off twenty-nine years' worth of thoughtless, ingrained reflex ... only to be stopped dead in her tracks by some unforseen and usually humiliating obstacle. It was like trying to navigate a maze where all the walls were made of plexiglass. Everything had to be worked around the wound, and everything had to be done entirely with one hand. Nothing, _nothing_ was simple anymore.

Example: getting dressed. Generally speaking, most human beings can master this skill by age three. For Cruz, however, putting on her clothes that afternoon had very quickly degenerated into an unpleasant little black comedy. She had chosen a sleeveless tank-top as the easiest-looking piece of clothing to insert her newly warped body into, and had put it on very carefully. She had promptly gotten stuck, her bad arm caught half in and half out of the armhole of the shirt. It went downhill from there. Every movement, every attempt to try to wriggle one way or the other had resulted in a double shotgun blast of pain - one through her shoulder and one through the center of her head, which was now singing a more or less constant duet with the wound. She had wriggled and twisted and yet she had remained utterly stuck.

_Stuck_. Stuck while getting _dressed_.

She'd started to cry miserably. But even as she cried she kept right at it, twisting this way and that, grimly working through the pain. Her mind had turned back to the first few days in the hospital, when she had been dreading the inevitable visit from the physiotherapist. This hypothetical person probably would have turned out to be either a perky little sexpot or some hunky athletic type who might eventually start putting the moves on her. Girl talk or hospital romance. Maddening either way. She had pictured the therapist shouting caring-but-stern fluff at her while she broke in her new plastic-fantastic shoulder joint. She would have hated that, she knew she would have, but ironically enough she was now having to play the part herself. She had to drive herself, push mercilessly. Force it! Work it! Mind over matter! Willpower conquers all! Maintain _focus_! Insert motivational slogan here!

Eventually she had gotten unstuck and finished.

But it had taken her twenty minutes.

And now her goddam hand wouldn't stop trembling.

She was weakening, and there was really no use trying to kid herself about it. Eight hours had passed since the great escape from Angel of Mercy hospital, and she could feel herself deteriorating. Falling asleep right out in the elements was only the latest symptom of the larger problem.

And again, why paint pretty colors over the truth? She _hadn't_ "fallen asleep." She had "passed out." She was charging merrily towards total physical exhaustion, and if she didn't soon find a place to bed down and rest properly, she would be looking at total physical collapse. The pain was getting steadily worse, and she wasn't holding to any illusions about how much longer she could stand against _that_, either. She knew very well what she was doing here; she was pushing herself to the absolute limits of what the human body was capable of enduring, fueled only by that desperate, undiluted rage. And that couldn't hold her forever.

It might hold her long enough, though. She was moving fast, and so far she'd made more progress than she would have dared hope for. She had wasted no time beginning her search for Aaron Noble, starting immediately after leaving her apartment that afternoon. She had been saddled with the knowledge that she had all of New York standing between her and him, but she had gamely fallen back into cop-mode and followed her instincts, using his last known whereabouts as her jumping-off point. His last known whereabouts, the place where all of this had started and the place where she had -

_(been crippled)_

come within an ace of losing her life: the Melrose Hotel. She had called the Melrose from a payphone, and asked if Mr. Noble was still a guest there.

The receptionist's mechanically polite voice had chilled several degrees at the mention of the name. It seemed that Mr. Noble was not only no longer _staying_ at the Melrose, he was no longer _welcome_ at the Melrose. The hotel didn't approve of rowdy, destructive parties - it was even less tolerant when it came to hosting police shootings in your room. Noble was out on his ass, and wouldn't be coming back.

This was the answer Cruz had been expecting, and it posed a difficult question - how the hell would she find him now? She'd just exhausted her only lead, so where was the _next_ jumping-off point going to come from?

The receptionist had handed it right to her; Noble had actually left a forwarding address. He was now staying at the _Bridgeview_ Hotel. Cruz knew the Bridgeview in passing; it was considerably smaller and more subtle than the Melrose - quaint, old-fashioned, and out-of-the-way.

The receptionist asked Cruz if she would be needing the Bridgeview's number.

Cruz said no, that was okay, she was gonna head over there in person.

Then, riding high on this latest stroke of good luck, she found herself having to suppress the morbidly playful urge to ask the woman if the carpets in Noble's room were Scotch-Guarded ... and if so, had the cleaning staff managed to get all the blood out yet?

Instead, Cruz had thanked the receptionist and hung up.

So a new question had appeared on the big board: why was Noble so open about his whereabouts? It wasn't the way you'd expect a man running from a pissed-off biker gang to behave, was it? Nobody in their right mind took the Disciples lightly; these were the sort of guys who were known to gun down _judges_ in broad daylight. If they really wanted Noble dead, then Noble would probably be dead. It all served to strengthen her theory: Noble had found some way to get back on good terms with them. Either that or ...

... or Noble was never in as much danger as he'd wanted her to believe.

Didn't matter. All water under the bridge. What was important was that she had found him, and a lot faster and easier than she would have expected.

The plan from there had been straightforward enough; go to the Bridgeview, wait for Noble to appear, and ambush him. In the most innocent sense of the word _ambush_, of course. He probably wasn't going to be very happy to see her, and she was trying to keep a low profile. The element of surprise seemed smart, and she would wait until after dark.

Ah, but what then? How would she make Noble do what she wanted him to do? She didn't really think threatening him would get her anywhere - she had nothing to threaten him _with_ - and it was ludicrous to think he would ever help her voluntarily.

Wasn't it?

Whatever mistakes she might have made in the recent past, Cruz was still an expert manipulator and always had been; she never would have gotten as far as she had otherwise. She was as wily in an interrogation room as she was on the streets, and she was a frighteningly quick and accurate judge of character. Look at Boscorelli - she may have misjudged _him_, but only because Yokas had complicated matters. If not for Yokas, Cruz would have had him curbed like a dog. There's always a way in, after all, and it's usually surprisingly simple - with Bosco it was sex. Sex and _power_. Run around and terrorize criminals with him by day, bump uglies with him at night, and there you had it - tame as a kitten. Her only mistake with him had been in getting complacent and missing the Yokas variable.

Noble was a bit more complex. It would be easy to assume that the way into him was drugs. It wasn't. Drugs would _help_, of course, but Noble's meth addiction was incidental - there was another way she thought she could pull Noble's strings, something that was more essential to his nature. It was, to fall back on an old cliche, the Ace up her sleeve. But she would have to wait until the time came to see if it would work.

And waiting is, as the song goes, the hardest part. The problem with her plan was that it had left her with several hours to kill before nightfall and nowhere to kill them. She had no vehicle, and driving a car was probably beyond her capabilities now anyway. She couldn't go back home and she had nowhere else to hide. She was cut off from everything and everyone, left completely to her own devices.

So she had been reduced to what basically amounted to the life of a bag lady. A _fugitive_ bag lady. Stay low, avoid attention, and most of all, watch out for the cops. It was almost funny. The Hunter Becomes the Hunted - sounded like a perfectly cornball title for one of Noble's books. But she had worked undercover plenty of times, and she knew how to make herself inconspicuous. The role she usually played was hooker, but at the moment bag lady suited the circumstances; she looked terrible, and did whatever she could to make herself look even worse. She'd put in the time on benches like the one she was sitting on now, slouched apathetically in her heavy coat with the hood up and her hair hanging in her eyes.

Just another derelict here, folks. Pay no mind, pay no mind.

Around five o'clock she had taken a calculated risk by riding a bus across the city to the Bridgeview. She wasn't keen on the idea of using public transit (and had no desire whatsoever to get into another cab), but trying to walk there would have literally killed her. Again, though - she was inconspicuous. Invisible. Just another derelict. She'd arrived without incident at the Bridgeview and took up her position across the street, her bench affording her a good view of the building.

The Bridgeview hotel was not located anywhere near a body of water, nor did it feature the view of any kind of bridge. The pretty name, it seemed, was just a pretty name. It was very small and had a stylized, rustic look that was designed to appeal to simpler tastes. A country bed-and-breakfast in the middle of the big city - how cute. The parking lot was on the west side, equally undersized and understated, with perhaps a grand total of fifteen parking spaces altogether.

Her heart had skipped when she saw Noble's black Mercedes there, one of only five cars in the lot, parked second from the end on the leftmost row.

He was _here_.

Jesus, it was _amazing_, wasn't it? How far she was getting, and in such a short time! More than she'd ever dared hope, and she was beginning to suspect it was that as much as anything else that was keeping her together. And if she could keep it together just a little while longer, she could really pull this thing off.

_Not necessarily true, _she admonished herself lightly. _I'm not really any further ahead than I was at Mercy. We still have to see how our writer friend reacts to the situation. He's the biggest variable now. If things don't work out with him, I'm pretty much screwed._

There wasn't much conviction behind this, however - the Voice of Doubt had gone on vacation, and arguments for caution weren't quite as convincing when they didn't come wearing her father's skin.Besides, Noble should be coming out any time now, so she'd have her answers soon enough. And he _would_ be out - of that she was sure. She knew he liked hitting the bars almost every night, usually a swanky place called the Crimson Lion, and she doubted his recent troubles had dampened his love of the nightlife. All part of _The Psychology of Noble 101_. Ambushing him there had occurred to her as a possible strategy, but might have proven too dangerous. Too _exposed_. Better to sit here and wait.

She just had to keep herself from nodding off (_passing out_) again.

Cruz reached into her coat and withdrew a small paper bag, one part of a sad, weird little inventory she'd prepared before leaving home. The bag contained six mini sugar donuts, most of them half-stale. She wasn't hungry but she felt she needed to eat something, if only to provide the illusion that she was keeping up her strength. After careful consideration, the donuts - dry and tasteless - had seemed least likely to disagree with her. They were tucked into an inside pocket next to the two extra magazines for the Tec-9; the gun itself was hidden under the coat, on its strap over her right shoulder. Noble's meth was in the opposite pocket.

She had also gathered up a few little personal artifacts, exhibits from the Museum of Maritza Cruz's Life and Times. Stupid, dangerous thing to waste time on (particularly when it now took her upwards of twenty minutes just to put on a _shirt_) but as she was preparing to leave Cruz had discovered something strange and more than a little surprising: she could not just walk away from her old life without taking some small piece of it with her. Here she was - hard-headed, pragmatic, cold and calculating Maritza Cruz, unable to leave home without a keepsake. But she had this to consider: what was going to happen to all of her possessions once the police had finished coring out her apartment? She had no family, and as for friends ... well, what use would Claudia Cortez have for any of her personal effects? Or Ramon Valenzuela, for that matter ... assuming Ramon even still gave a shit about her when all was said and done. Anything of value would eventually be auctioned off, and the rest ... the rest would probably end up in a landfill.

She couldn't let them have that, not after all that she'd had taken from her. She couldn't let them have _everything_.

So she had grabbed an item here and there, thoughtlessly and more or less at random. The ski-trip photograph from the mantle in her living room, ripped unceremoniously out of its frame. She still had absolutely no idea why she had chosen it over all the others. Lettie's smile, perhaps - broad and toothy and so very rare in those last three years. The wristwatch she was wearing had been her father's, not terribly expensive but solidly built and still running smoothly. Even with the band cinched as tight as it would go it still hung loose on her wrist, and though it had been sitting untouched in one drawer or another for almost fifteen years, she imagined she could still smell his cologne on it.

And she had the rosary.

She thought the rosary might have been the last item she'd snatched; it had been stowed in an end table in the hallway just inside the door. It had belonged to her paternal grandmother and was very old, the wooden beads dark with age and use. Her father had given it to her as a First Communion gift, and she had later given it to Lettie for _her_ First Communion. Because she had loved her little sister so fiercely - and because their father had impressed upon her how priceless the rosary was - she had considered it the supreme gift.

Lettie had given it back to her later on, though, insisting that an heirloom so valuable should go to the elder sibling. Lettie also insisted that she was never, _ever_ going to have children, and so would have nobody to pass it down to anyway. Maritza took the rosary back, but a year after _that _she gave it to Lettie again, this time as a birthday gift. It changed hands three or four times after that, becoming a kind of silly little running joke between them in the years before all the jokes, running or otherwise, dried up. But it was still always treated with a deep underlying respect. They were good Catholic girls, after all.

When the paramedics found Lettie after her next-to-last overdose, she had been alone, dying, and lying naked in her own drying shit. Aside from her precious meth and related paraphernalia, she'd had nothing to her name but a red-and-white striped tube top, a pair of black velvet hotpants, a thong that was a size too big for her, and a pair of imitation-leather boots. These had been strewn carelessly about the ratty apartment where she'd been found. She'd also had a purse containing forty-six dollars, some pitiful ID (including a tattered card that identified her as a Mouseketeer), and her grandmother's wooden rosary. The paramedics or the cops (Sullivan and Davis, as Cruz recalled) had gathered the stuff up and brought it to the hospital with her.

Cruz had disposed of Lettie's meth right away - it was only when she checked Lettie out of the hospital that she discovered the other stuff ... which included, of all things, their grandmother's priceless rosary. She had given Lettie back the money, thrown the rest of her junk away (she had brought clothes from her own closet for Lettie to wear outside, and though Maritza herself had a relatively small frame, they had still hung droopy and shapeless on Lettie), and quietly pocketed the beads. Lettie never said a word about it. Cruz doubted she even remembered that she had been carrying the rosary at all.

And yet she _had_ been carrying it. She had been carrying the rosary close to her - and after so many years - but Cruz had found this more puzzling than heartwarming. Did it signify something, some sentimental connection Lettie had with her past? Be nice to think so, wouldn't it? Cruz thought it more likely that Lettie had kept the rosary simply because it was _hers_, one possession that she could afford to keep and carry, something she couldn't trade for dope and wouldn't be worth stealing. She was convinced that by the end Lettie had been too fried to attach any real emotional significance to it, and the thought of Lettie actually using the beads to _pray_ was somehow grotesque.

So Cruz had liberated and rescued the rosary. She had, in effect, stolen back what had passed between them freely so many times.

And by the end of that same day, Lettie was dead.

There had been a period where Cruz wondered with a kind of bleak humor (and a deeper and wholly serious unease) if there might be some connection, if the rosary had somehow been protecting Lettie. Or if not the rosary itself, then perhaps their long-dead grandmother, _through_ the rosary. Silly, right? Superstition of the purest strain. Right? Superstition better suited to her old-world Colombian grandmother than to a hard-headed Twenty-First century New York cop.

And yet the idea had stuck fast.

Cruz had actually lost most of her faith by adolescence (she had narrowed it down to somewhere between fifteen and sixteen) but she'd kept up with church; she had been a steadfast regular at St. Francis Xavier Parish right up until last week. Father Manuel Estrada was still the Parish priest; he'd been there when she was growing up, and he still knew and remembered her. She went to Mass, and she went to Confession as well, more often than not with Estrada. She went after any major takedown, she went when she killed in the line of duty, and she went whenever she got a taste of her own mortality on the job. Which, in her case, was often.

That part of her life was over now, and even if she had only been paying lip-service to her upbringing, she couldn't deny that it felt strange. She wouldn't be going to Confession anytime in the immediate future ... unless it was with a prison chaplain. Nor would she be attending Mass. Today should have been one of her regular days, in fact, and she found that even now the idea of missing a service made her uneasy. It _itched._ It itched at her in the same way the idea of a rosary acting as Lettie's magic talisman had itched at her. Religious fear, so deeply ingrained in her that it almost bordered on brainwashing. You had to go to church. Everybody did. If you didn't, you were to consider yourself officially fucked.

Her father would have been quick to agree. Not in such colorful terms, perhaps - he would have been more tasteful and far more succinct: _Mortal Sin, 'Ritza, Mortal Sin. _Mortal Sin, worthy of proper noun status and always delivered in that slow, dry, somehow sorrowful tone he reserved for matters of religion. You had to go to Mass or you were looking at Mortal Sin. No excuses accepted or even listened to - if you had your arms and legs chopped off, then you gritted your teeth and dragged yourself there by your lips. Because Mortal Sin was as bad as you could get. Like _mortal wound_, only it was your soul and not your body; think of it as the spiritual head-shot. It was a Mortal Sin not to go to church, and on the rare occasions when she or Lettie skipped or missed Mass, their father had always seemed more heartbroken than angry. He'd taken his old-fashioned Catholicism seriously enough to honestly believe his girls were endangering their immortal souls, and while that had never failed to make her feel guilty, it was also something Cruz had found both mildly comical and a bit sad. But she had loved him to the very end of his life (miserable as it was in those last few years) and could never stand to hurt him. So she'd kept on going to church.

She did remember making an honest attempt to find meaning in it after Lettie's death. In part because of her half-genuine fear that she had killed Lettie by taking her rosary, but mostly because re-evaluating her beliefs seemed called for at the time. At a certain point Mass loses its relevance as a means of actual communication - the words melt into a drone, a mindless background hum of vocal rhythms and patterns designed mostly to soothe and hypnotize. So she began to cut through that, to actually _listen_ to the prayers and the sermons, taking part in the comfortable little rituals with an open mind. Just to see if anything clicked.

It ended up more an act of blind desperation than an effort to reconnect with a faith she wasn't sure she even understood. Just trying to make sense out of senselessness, that's all. Trying to find some way to reconcile that repulsive, stinking, cadaverous _thing_ with the pudgy little girl who had worshiped the ground her big sister walked on, the big sister who had by necessity also become her substitute mother. Trying to connect a ninety-two-pound methamphetamine addict the paramedics had found lying in her own shit with her little sister, her beautiful little sister. _Letitia_, which means joy.

No sense of higher meaning ever came to her, no great revelation, no underlying promise of redemption.

She wasn't exactly surprised.

Now, though, in this new place she found herself in, all of these long-buried and long-dismissed questions seemed to be boiling up to the surface of her mind again, and that didn't surprise her much, either. A few hours ago she'd sat on her bed with a loaded gun, toying with the idea of just going ahead and blowing her brains out. Follow Johnny Hoyle's example. And she'd been close, so _very_ close, a hair's breadth away from succumbing to it. Moments like that are where your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. Hers had not, and so she supposed all of this reflection - collecting stupid little trinkets, brooding over photographs, raking over religious nostalgia - was her own perverse way of _forcing_ a flash.

She had also started thinking about all the people she'd killed. More specifically Gaines and Alvarez, her two executions. There was a certain shame there, of course, but never anything approaching honest, full-bore guilt - even if she went looking for it. Soul-searching produced very little. Sometimes she felt a twinge of remorse over Alvarez, remembering how he'd cried, how he'd begged for his life ... but then she would remind herself of what he'd done, what he _was_, and it would pass. For Gaines she never felt so much as a twinge. Was that wrong? Knowing what they were, knowing what they'd done, was it wrong to feel that way? _Could_ it really be wrong to feel that way?

Murder was a Mortal Sin, as well.

But what was murder? Killing was a part of war, distasteful but sometimes necessary and certainly not always clean and clear-cut - and by no means did that end with Gaines and Alvarez. Some of her _lawful_ kills had been questionable and she knew it. She had shot Lavonne Jackson in the back, despite being able to see - clearly - that his MAC-10 had run dry. Despite being able to see that Bosco was in the process of coaxing him into a surrender. If she had announced herself and covered Lavonne with _another_ gun, the fat fuck probably would have dropped his empty MAC and given up.

And then the whole tired dance would have to start, wouldn't it? Lavonne in the interrogation room. Lavonne hiding behind a lawyer. Lavonne being stubborn and arrogant and trying to intimidate them with his sharp gangsta wit. Lavonne would have had no trouble making the system - the shitty God-damned fucked-up _system_ - work to _his_ advantage, while Cruz and Bosco would have had to struggle to make it work to theirs.

Easier to kill him.

So she had killed him, and then she had hunkered down next to his corpse and pretended to hear him make a Dying Declaration.

Because that was the way it had to be.

She was not a psychopath. Cruz knew this because she could feel and empathize with others, something which psychopaths were by definition incapable of. But she could _also_ distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, the deserving and the undeserving. After taking a life Cruz would always do the counseling thing, as was Department policy, and she would make all the proper noises about guilt and conflicted remorse, but none of it was real. For her there had never been any conflict or doubt about the act itself. It was the _Confessions _that were real, and again this presented a contradiction - she didn't really believe in God or Higher Meaning, and yet she drew comfort from the absolution of the Confessional box. _Forgive me Father, for I have sinned_ - that was how you started, and yet she didn't really believe there was any sin in what she did, did she? _Mortal_ or otherwise. If there _was_ a God, she believed He would be on her side. He would forgive her her sins, because He would know that in her heart she was only doing right.

She had, however, kept Gaines and Alvarez to herself and out of the little booth. Far too dangerous to let Father Estrada in on _that_ little secret, even given the sanctity and guaranteed total secrecy of the Confessional. She wondered now what the priest would have made of it. Correction: what he _would_ make of it - the story of her arrest and downfall would reach him eventually, and Gaines and Alvarez would likely end up a part of it. So what then? What would he say? That she was headed straight to hell?

Papa might have. As much as he'd loved her, it was quite possible that her father would proclaim her ready to ride the southbound elevator after she checked out. Her father had never budged on the subject of hell. He'd taught his girls about Heaven, of course - Heaven was sitting at the Right Hand of God. If asked what, precisely, that _meant_, Papa would claim it was simply like living the best moment of your life over and over again. To a couple of pie-eyed little girls, that sounded nice. But he didn't gloss over the other end of things, and if he scared them, all the better. Papa had subscribed to the classical idea of Hell as a simple, straightforward affair: you burned. You roasted like a big ol' Thanksgiving turkey, _forever_, without ever being consumed, praying the whole time for a death that would never come.

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps that was what was waiting for her. _Hello, Maritza - welcome to the furnace! _It really wouldn't surprise her. In fact, it would be perfectly in line with the balance of the world as she saw it. Look at how it had all ended for her - everything she'd ever done, every little bit of good, _all of it_, was gone. _Erased_. Every arrest, every conviction ... all unearthed, picked apart, and erased. They should be falling on their goddamned knees and _thanking_ her for all she'd done, and instead they had destroyed her. From that, hell seemed the next logical step.

That was why she had to keep going. Pain was nothing. A shaky hand was nothing. There was no backing off this thing now, no more _whatever happens, happens_. The odds had never been stacked in favor of any kind of meaningful success, but she had already proven that very day that she was pretty capable in the face of adversity, and now she had that sleazebag writer locked in her sights. She was lucky. She had always been lucky, but she was also cunning and she was _strong_, and damned if she wasn't really _doing_ this, for better or for worse she was really doing this, and she wasn't going to stop for anything. The closer you get to something, the more you know you want it. The more you know you _need_ it. She _needed_ to kill Richard Buford. For her sister, first and foremost. To decapitate his operation and save countless others _like_ her sister, certainly. But she was also doing this for herself, and she wouldn't waste any energy trying to deny it. It was, quite simply, her only shot at leaving a legacy. Putting the redneck son of a bitch down would at least leave something tangible behind her, some sense of accomplishment, something those bastards wouldn't be able to take away from her.

Whatever happened to her after that - Riker's Island or a pine box - wouldn't matter.


	12. Chapter 7, Part II

Chapter 7 Continued

II.

Cruz produced another of the little sugar donuts - the last - and began to eat it listlessly as she went back to watching the hotel.

Still nothing. She could make out what might have been the shape of the desk clerk bobbing around through one of the first floor windows, but that was as far as signs of life went. Nobody coming in or going out. And no sign of her old pal.

Nine-forty-five now.

The Voice of Doubt piped up suddenly, speaking clearly from its seat in the center of her head for the first time in several hours: _What if he's _with_ somebody when he comes out? A woman, maybe. Remember the one on the balcony the day you and Bosco dropped in on him at the Melrose. Doesn't seem to have much trouble in that area, does he? _

To this Cruz only offered an mental shrug. If he had somebody with him then her plan would probably be dead in the water. Simple answer to a stupid question. And there was no end to the questions, stupid or otherwise. No end to the variables. And none of it could be helped. The only question she cared about right now was the simplest: where _was_ the stupid son of a bitch?

_What if he _never_ comes out? _the Voice of Doubt went on smoothly._ Hmm? What if he decided to get high and watch a movie in his jockeys? You assume an awful lot, Maritza. _

_Then I guess I sit here all night, _she thought peevishly back at herself, still chewing the tough little donut._ God knows I have nothing better to do. _

Roughly thirty seconds after this all passed through her mind, Aaron Noble came out of the Bridgeview hotel.

Alone.

Cruz froze in mid-bite, heart stuttering. There was a weird moment of disbelief and unreality and even an odd, unexpected jealousy, because it was him over there, really _him_, looking invigorated and relaxed and utterly at ease - a neat one-eighty degree turn from the physical and mental jellyfish he'd been the last time she'd seen him. He didn't appear to be dressed for anywhere as uppity as the Crimson Lion - he was wearing jeans, an open-throated work-shirt, and a fashionably dusty and worn denim jacket, but it didn't take long to see that he had the distinct air of a man headed out for a night on the town. He was out of jail, out of trouble, and not missing a beat getting back into the swing of things. Just a middle-aged man of the upper crust who felt and lived younger than his years.

Still getting laid, still getting high, his body whole and intact and free of pain.

Cruz was hit with a sudden, fiercely seductive idea; shoot the pretentious fuck. Just forget everything else and shoot him. Make _that_ the last hurrah instead of some improbable scheme to blow away some biker she'd never even met. She could walk straight up to him, fire off a casual hello, and then empty all thirty rounds into his sorry ass.

She threw the remains of the soggy donut aside, stood up, and started across the street at a fairly respectable clip. By now she had developed a certain delicate, ginger way of moving that minimized the pain, a kind of shuffling, loping gait that didn't quite qualify as a run. It also added a little extra spice to the illusion that she was just another of New York's muddled homeless. If he caught sight of her too soon, he might not even notice her.

Noble paused on the porch just outside the hotel's main doors. Then, mimicking what Cruz herself had done after waking out of her doze, he tipped his head back and seemed to draw in a deep lungful of air, smelling the rain. Tasting it. Savoring it.

Ah, so _cleansing_, wasn't it? So _revitalizing_! Didn't it feel so _good_ to be alive?

_Fucker_, Cruz thought blackly as she reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street, heart cycling up to a healthy gallop. _Motherfucker._

Noble got his fill of the air, nipped down the front steps, and started along a small path that curled around the building to the parking lot, merrily juggling his keys from hand to hand as he went. Moving fast, and with a ridiculous little spring in his step. Look out ladies - the old tom's on the prowl. Cruz increased her speed as much as she dared.

She also slipped her hand under her coat and took hold of the gun. As a precaution. Just in case he did something stupid.

_I'm not gonna shoot him_, she told herself calmly. _He's not worth it. Not worth it at all._

But as she approached him she was less and less sure she believed herself. Seeing Noble for the first time since the hotel room - and so _different_ than before - she was reminded of how detestable she'd found him from the very beginning. This bigshot, tough-guy _cabron_ who ran with New York's trendiest crowd, a bigshot, tough-guy _cabron_ - a man of the _upper crust_ - who was really nothing more than a glorified junkie. A man who wrote a lot of sensational trash, destroying the lives and careers of cops while building men like Richard Buford into folk-heroes. Hypocrisy personified, folks. Noble really and truly _was_ the embodiment of everything she despised.

He reached his car and unlocked the door. Cruz came up on him almost soundlessly, the rain masking what little noise her footsteps made. Noble was humming - she could hear it as she approached, could even pick out the tune: _Hotel California_. Her hand tightened on the gun, and it was at that moment, just as he was opening the car door, that Noble turned and saw her standing there.

For a heartbeat or two there was no recognition.

Then his face went slack. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in what was almost a parody of perfect disbelief.

The mad impulse to start shooting vanished abruptly. It was replaced by the even madder impulse to laugh at him, at how goddam stupid he looked. And yet at the same time she found she could almost sympathize; the last time she and Noble were in the same room together, she'd been unconscious and bleeding out on the floor.

Boys and girls, brothers and sisters, if ever there was a situation that begged the phrase _you look like you've seen a ghost_, this was surely it.

"Cruz," he said at last, breathing her name in the low, awed way a savage might breathe the name of a feared deity. The easy calm he'd had when he came out of the Bridgeview fell away like mask, and suddenly he was no longer Aaron Noble the bigshot tough-guy _cabron_. Now he was Aaron Noble the whiny, hopeless addict, and Cruz liked that onemuch better. _Much_.

She smiled sweetly and gestured at the car. "Step away."

He swallowed, eyes dancing around in search of help, the rain dribbling ridiculously from the end of his nose. He licked his lips nervously and said, in a very small voice: "No."

"Come on, Noble!" she chided him, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice and not quite managing it. She was truly enjoying herself now, in spite of it all. "We're still friends, right?"

He looked at her warily. Then, apparently deciding his _cojones_ were safe for the moment, he straightened and slammed the car door. "What the hell do you want from me?"

Cruz studied him for a moment, again taking in the startling change in his appearance and bearing. She could feel that good humor slipping away already; when you got right down to the raw flesh of the matter, Noble just wasn't very funny. "How'd you do it?" she said, and though her voice still cheery there was an ominous edge in it now, one that Noble clearly heard. "Huh? How did you manage to get off so fucking clean?"

He squinted through the rain. "You mean the Willie G. thing?"

"What else would I be talking about?"

"It was _self-defense_, Cruz." He snorted. "Jesus, _you_ were the one trying to cover it up."

She moved in on him, making him back up a step. The initial burst of euphoria was completely gone now. "What did you tell them? Hmm? How about you tell me _that_, Noble. What did you tell them about _me_?"

He shifted from one foot to the other, looking away from her and fastening his gaze almost longingly on his car. "What could I say, Cruz? They found my gun. I had to tell them what really happened."

She frowned darkly. "Oh, so you just turned around and stabbed me in the back? Just like that? After I tried to help you?"

He licked his lips again and shot another glance at the car. She could quite clearly see him gauging his chances of getting to it before she could start shooting. He was probably armed himself, and if he decided the odds were stacked against a getaway, it was possible that _he_ might start shooting.

_Careful now. This isn't the way you wanted to start with him. You don't want to scare him off, and you sure as hell don't want to start a stupid goddam firefight right here. He probably figures you don't have much to lose. _

_And he would be right. _

"Look, Cruz," he said slowly, speaking in the wary, aw-shucks-I'm-on-your-side tone one uses to reason with a lunatic. "You were only covering my ass because it would fuck up your case if you didn't. You got me into the whole mess. You were _using_ me. So pardon me if I seem ungrateful."

She clenched her teeth and didn't reply. This line of discussion was pointless, she knew. A complete dead-end proposition. Pointless, and irrelevant in the bargain. He'd gotten his ass of the hook somehow, leave it at that. For killing Willie, for running away afterwards, even for those goddam expanding bullets that had put her in this miserable state; the last time she checked, it was illegal for private citizens to own them. He'd done it, somehow he'd done it, but when all was said and done what did the _hows _and_ whys _matter anyway? It was another variation on the same old tune. Guys like Noble seemed able to grease their way out of _anything_.

Ah, to be a Rich White Male.

"Forget it," she said tightly, hating him. "Just forget it. It's history."

He nodded and offered a terse, agreeable grunt. But she could still see the relief in his expression, in the way his whole posture relaxed.

"You carrying?" she asked casually.

Noble shrugged indifferently. "Colt .45 in my jacket."

She smiled a bit. "You wouldn't be thinking of putting me on a slab next to Willie, would you?"

"I don't need the aggravation." He gave her a quick once-over and snorted again. "You look like shit, Cruz. I'm guessing nobody knows you're here."

"You guess right."

"So what do I owe the honor of this very special visit?"

Her smile soured. "I came to ask how the new book's coming along these days."

"Didn't realize you were such a fan!" He grinned. "Oh! I get it! You must have dragged yourself out here for an autograph! Sorry - don't have a pen handy at the moment."

"See, this is _exactly_ what I have trouble with. You seem pretty cheery for a guy who was shitting his pants over being on the Disciples' hit list last week. Not worried?"

"Oh, so you're here to _check_ on me, then. I'm flattered, but I'm afraid I don't like you ... you know ... in _that way_."

"You want to get serious with me," she said quietly. She kept her voice cold and dangerous, but inside her excitement was growing. "It's one thing to con your way out of a murder charge. It's a whole other trick to get a bunch of redneck bikers to stop breathing down your neck."

He shrugged. "Things change."

"No. You were in a _bad_ way, Noble." Her voice became reedy and mocking. "_'You gotta protect me, Cruz. You gotta give me my gun back, Cruz. You gotta keep the big bad bikers away from me, Cruz.'_ You'd burned all your bridges with the Disciples when you helped us bust Willie, and you dug yourself in deeper when you gave us that tip on Buford. So tell me - what's different now?"

Noble smiled thinly. "Yeah, well, I might have ... exaggerated a bit. About how much trouble I was in."

"Now we're getting somewhere. Keep talking."

Noble visibly loosened up another notch, and Cruz felt another little squeeze of hatred for him. Sixty seconds ago you had a man getting psyched up for an impromptu gunfight, and now he was eager for a chance to brag. "Okay - Willie tried to kill me because I set him up, right? And I just _assumed_ that he was doing it on Buford's orders. After all, he must have had to get permission for the hit, right?"

Cruz nodded slowly. She thought she could already see where this was headed, although it was almost too ludicrously straightforward to believe.

"_Buford said no_, Cruz," Noble said, after an appropriate pause for effect. "He didn't believe Willie because, as it turns out, Willie was a hothead. Nobody _ever_ believed anything the guy said. So Willie decided he'd take it out of my hide on his own terms." He shook his head. "The Disciples never knew about _any_ of it. _Buford_ never knew. He never knew I helped bust Willie, never knew that I sent you guys after _him_."

Cruz smiled in spite of herself. It was a misunderstanding. An _assumption_. _That_ was what it all came down to. She thought back to when she and Bosco were tailing Willie, how the biker had thrown a hissy-fit and started kicking the shit out of a payphone just before going to kill Noble. Now she knew why - he'd gotten the order to back off, straight from Da Man himself. But Willie hadn't _wanted_ to back off.

"That must have been quite a relief when you found that out, Noble," she said dryly. "And so here you are, right back to where you started."

Noble shrugged and said nothing. But he was smirking openly now.

_You egotistical bastard_, she thought bitterly. _Played everybody and got off scott-free. At least it'll make things easier for me. _

"On the other hand," she said mildly. "You must have been pretty pissed off when you found out you'd spent a week laying low, not being able to score any dope." She eyed him, giving him the same shrewd, leering once-over he'd treated her to a moment ago. "I'd say you're doing okay these days."

Noble sighed. "I know why you're here, Cruz," he said grimly. "At least, I think I do."

Cruz arched her eyebrows innocently. "Oh? Why?"

"You want me to take you to Buford," he said. He was using a slow, patronizing, somehow _parental_ tone, one that brought back that earlier urge to just drop the whole thing, put a hot round in his guts, and leave him to scream himself to death on the wet asphalt. Or at least sweep the barrel of the Tec-9 across his face and break his jaw. It was the tone a father in a moldy '50's sitcom might use to say, _You're hinting at a pony for Christmas, aren't you, dear?_

"Right, Cruz? You want me to help you kill him."

"Got it on the first try, Noble," she said simply. She wasn't smiling anymore.

Now he would laugh at her. Laugh or call her crazy. And that would be okay, she would understand and forgive him that much - it would be a perfectly natural reaction. He could laugh at her, and once he had it out of his system, she could get to work convincing him.

But he didn't laugh. He just stared at her, his expression hovering somewhere between distaste and a kind of bewildered fascination. It was the way you'd look at someone with a terrible physical deformity; it was much the same way Schaeffer had looked down at her in the hospital. A thin skin of civility around a more obvious, deep-seated revulsion. Cruz didn't like being looked at that way. She most definitely didn't like being looked at that way by Aaron Noble.

He had no _right_ to look at her that way.

After a few contemplative seconds, his lips turned up at the corners in a pitying little smile.

Then he said, very softly: "Fuck you, Two-Bags."

Then, incredibly, he started to get into his car.

As if it was _over_. As if he could just _brush her off_.

Cruz's paralysis broke, the anger surging up her throat like thick, hot bile, almost tangible.

"_That is NOT the way you want to talk to me, Noble!_" she screamed hoarsely, unmindful of anyone who might hear, unmindful of the bolt of agony that her shoulder sent priority-mail to her brain. Her hand slid into her coat and grasped the Tec-9. There was no conscious thought in the movement whatsoever.

Noble saw the gun and froze half in and half out of his car. "What, you gonna shoot me now?" he said. Trying to sound defiant. Defiant, and ready to call the bluff.

Problem was, she didn't think it _was_ a bluff. Problem was, she was getting some serious _deja vu_ going here. Leo Gaines had died this way - _just this same way_. Gaines had pushed her. Gaines had pushed her and taunted her and dared her, and she had not been in the best of mindsets then, either. And Gaines had ended up face-down in the dirt for it.

_Cool it. Cool it and _focus_. Remember the catchphrase of the day. _Focus

Cruz worked to get herself under control, to _focus_, her whole body - abused, exhausted, nearing the breaking point - seething with pain now, just from the exertion of yelling at him. The thought of literally screaming herself to death right here was as good a reason as any to cool off. She released her grip on the gun and let the coat fall over it.

"Listen," she said, as calm and as reasonable as she could manage under the circumstances. "You don't have to be anywhere near this. All you have to do is point me in the right direction."

"And what would that get me?" Noble said, slamming the car door yet again and throwing his hands up angrily. "Huh? Aiding and abetting, that's what. You're a fugitive right now, you know. Your face is in the news. Biggest corruption scandal in NYPD history, they're calling it. Haven't you turned on a TV lately?"

Cruz clenched her teeth and said nothing.

"I'm not shitting you," Noble went on, as if she'd tried to argue the point. "If I actually landed a meeting with Buford - and it looks very unlikely, at least anytime soon - I sure as hell wouldn't let _you_ tag along. You're hot property, babe."

"What did I _just_ say?" she spat. "All you have to do is lead me to him. You go in, get your interview, and leave. I take over from there."

"You're insane," he said with genuine wonder. "You're absolutely _off the fucking rails_, Cruz. So ... what's the plan? You're just gonna walk up to him and shoot him? Just like that?"

She shrugged. "Yeah."

Noble shook his head and laughed. "Let me tell you a few things about our friend br'er Buford. First, he'll have bodyguards. He _always_ has bodyguards. Handpicked guys - hardcore, lifelong Disciples, and they're on him twenty-four hours a day. At least two, maybe four, all armed. Heavy artillery. MP5 submachine-guns or SPAS combat shotguns, most likely. Maybe an AK-47 for good measure. Make that thing under your coat look like a popgun." He smiled, evidently impressed by this little speech, which sounded like it had come straight out of one of his books ... which, for all Cruz knew, it had. "They'll have to bury what's left of you in a shoebox, Two-Bags."

Cruz chuckled. "All of that isn't your problem, Noble," she said gently.

"Oh, I think it is, Cruz. I can't help feeling that just talking to you right now is very bad for my health."

"I don't know about that," she said lightly. "In fact, I might have exactly what you need to stay healthy."

He grunted, unimpressed. "I can score just fine for myself these days, thank you very much. You said it yourself - I'm doing okay."

"But think for a minute, Noble - if you help me, you get all you want, _any time_ you want. Safer than buying it from some skell on the street. Plus, you know that from me it's always quality product - cops always have the best stuff, right? And as long as you help me, it's _free_."

Noble tried hard to keep his composure, tried to keep that haughty, narrow contempt on his face, but she could see that she had struck a nerve. A _big_ one. He wiped the rainwater from his nose anxiously, eyes dancing.

He was on the ropes now. She was sure of it. So it was time to play her Ace.

Cruz took a step towards him and put her right hand up, palm-out and as far away from the Tec-9 as it could get, the final peace-offering. "You could _really_ get something out of this, you know. Say you interview Buford, and you get the crowning chapter for your book. Then, just after you leave, I show up and kill him. I probably won't make it out alive, and maybe I won't even get _him_, but what the hell? It'll make an even _better_ chapter. What you writers call an _epilogue_, right? Put whatever spin on it you like, call me the crazy ex-cop from hell, whatever you want. I don't care."

Noble bit his lip and watched her, the rain running in little rills over his face, the gears clearly spinning again. He believed her. Or at least, he _wanted_ to. And this was it, of course, this was the key she'd been counting on, the way into his head. Noble was, in many ways, a coward - when he wasn't getting his regular fix, anyway. But he also considered himself a dedicated writer, and to him that meant immersing himself in what he was writing about to the point where he actually took up the lifestyle. Cruz supposed there could be merit in such heavily involved field research if you were, say, pulling a few shifts as a zookeeper so you could write a kid's book about Gary the Grumpy Gorilla. For Noble, however, living the life meant experimenting with drugs, hanging out with guys like Willie Griffin, and making lifelong connections with the likes of Richard Buford. Cruz was no expert, but she believed that most sensible writers wouldn't call that field research. She believed most sensible writers would call that sheer stupidity.

Aaron Noble, however, didn't see it that way. Aaron Noble saw it as devotion to the art. Aaron Noble was a man who always thought he was on a Great Writer's Adventure.

She was simply offering to take him on another one. And he knew it - he could almost _see_ it. Cruz thought she could almost see it herself, painted in flowery tabloid strokes:

_A Notorious and Elusive Drug Dealer sits down for an honest, candid interview (under a pseudonym) with an Award-Winning Writer ..._

_... but then, after the Award-Winning Writer packs up and leaves, a Disgraced, Crazed Ex-Cop shows up like some avenging spook (a sidebar on Lettie may be included). She must have followed him! _

_There's a bloody gun battle. Disgraced, Crazed Ex-Cop is shot to pieces. And who knows - maybe Buford is, too. However it turns out, it makes for one hell of a finale, and folks, get THIS - it's one hundred percent TRUE!_

Oh, sensationalism like that would _sell_. God-damned right it would.

"All I have to do is point you to Buford?" he said hesitantly.

"I'll stick close to you until the time comes. We'll both lay low. You get your interview, and I'll handle everything after that. We'll figure out the details once you know how it's gonna go down."

He seemed to think on it a moment longer, then wiped the rain out of his eyes. "You have to realize this isn't gonna be fast or easy. My new contact's this guy from up north. Rene Marchand. They call him Iggy 'cause he looks like Iggy Pop. He's one of the Disciples' connections from Montreal. Apparently Buford ran to Canada after you guys almost nailed him, instead of L.A. like everybody thought. Word is, he's on his way back."

Her heart sped up. "When?"

"Don't know. That's what I'm gonna find out from Iggy. I'm meeting him next week."

"No," she said. "You're meeting him tomorrow. You're gonna re-schedule."

Noble touched the center of his forehead tenderly and groaned. "This isn't a _dentist appointment_, Cruz! You're walking on eggshells with these guys all the time. Especially now."

"Is this Iggy hump in New York right now?"

"Yeah, but - "

"Do you know how to reach him?"

"Look, Cruz - "

"_Do you know how to reach him?_"

"Yes! But goddammit, I'm telling you - "

"Re-schedule!" she shouted, hammering out each word. "_Can - you - do - that?_"

"Yeah!" he cried. "Yeah, all right! Iggy spends most of his days shooting pool down in one Disciples shithole or another. I guess I could find out which one and hook up with him."

"Damn right you will," she said, though not unkindly. She found she was quickly rediscovering her sense of him, of how to pull his strings. She nudged him playfully, letting out some of the slack now, trying to calm him. "Remember, Noble - this is gonna _make_ that book of yours."

Noble shook his head. "Christ, what the hell am I doing?" he asked no-one in particular, and uttered a wild, shrill little laugh. "This is crazy. Just crazy. Why am I doing this?"

_Because you're a pathetic, drug-addicted egomaniac, that's why,_ she thought jovially._ And right now, I wouldn't have it any other way. _

Cruz leaned in close and shot him a sly, confidential smile. "Remember busting Willie? Remember how you told me after what an adrenaline rush it was?" The smile broadened. "This is gonna be a _thousand times better._"

Noble scratched his lower lip and looked away. Then he scratched his chin. Rubbed his neck. Tilted his head and took another of those head-clearing sniffs of the air, then swiped rain out of his eyes again.

Then he looked at her sharply, as if some big and potentially world-shattering idea had just dawned on him.

"This is about your sister, isn't it?" he said, smiling. "All of it. Revenge for Lettie."

Her own companionable little smile faded abruptly. "You don't talk about her," she said softly. "You understand me, Noble? I saw what you wrote about her, _how_ you wrote about her in that notepad. Lettie the ho. Lettie the slut. Lettie the scrawny little crack-whore, on her back twenty-four-seven for her drugs. My sister was behind that, Noble. My _sister_. She was a _footnote_ to you. So you _never_ talk about her. You don't have the right."

Noble shifted and looked poutily at his feet like a scolded child. "Look, you want to get in the car?" he asked shortly. "Or do you want to just stand here in the rain all night and try for a case of pneumonia?"


	13. Chapter 8: Bosco

* * *

What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know

Goes away in the end

* * *

Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"

* * *

Chapter 8

_Bosco_

I.

It's easy to stand around in a hospital washroom and get all philosophical, telling yourself that you're doing _the right thing_, that _it needs to end_, that you'll feel better if you_ own up_. Pretty little banalities like that, all part of life's great lessons as taught by mothers and fathers the world over. _Own up_, you're told, and you will be infinitely better off. You will sleep soundly at night and, more importantly, you will gain the respect of your peers with your courage and conviction. And - of _course_ - everything will be okay in the end.

And of course there _is_ that short-lived period of self-satisfaction, something that cleverly disguises itself as relief. Initially, it feels good to come clean; it's like coming out the other side of a dark, stinking tunnel, wondering just how the hell you got in there in the first place. Then ... ah, _then_ you get down to the business of tallying up the results, and that's when it hits you that you've stepped out of that tunnel and into a wasteland.

First, the job you love, the job you were _damned good at_ for almost twelve years, has been unceremoniously yanked out from under your feet. You have been neatly re-classified, flicked from one side of the law to the other with sickening ease; again with no pomp, ceremony or fanfare. You might see at least a token stretch in prison - where, being a cop, you will be put into protective custody, your only source of conversation coming from other crooked cops and maybe a pedophile or two. And protective custody isn't always _protective_, of course - if somebody wants you bad enough (and they're connected to the right people), you might well wake up some morning with your throat cut.

Even if you manage to deal with all of that, you still haven't touched on the worst of it. That's when you look around and realize that the people you cared about, everyone you _respected_, have all abandoned you with that same dizzying speed.

Abandoned you ... or been driven away by you. It's all a matter of perspective.

After posting his bail, Bosco's mother invited him to stay with her as long as necessary. Hell, as long as he _wanted_. Come back home to Ma and all will be right with the world again. It didn't matter what they were saying about him, Rose Boscorelli claimed, nor did it matter that he was now effectively unemployed. Rose was tough, her son was tough, and together they'd get through this thing. A mother's love knows no limits, right?

And yet every minute he spent with her he could see that it was all an act. It was a pretty good one, but it was an act nonetheless, a strained cover for how deeply heartbroken she really was. After all, Maurice had always been Rose's good boy. Maurice was the cop, the _hero_, the polar opposite of his brother the cokehead, the loser, the spectacular waste of skin and space. Not that Rose _didn't_ love Michael, but Maurice had always been the one trying to help people, always sticking up for the underdog. Maurice had taken that and made something real out of it. Maurice was the one who had made good.

He left late the next morning, giving her a quick peck on the cheek and offering little in the way of explanation. He didn't have the energy to confront her, and he sure as hell couldn't stay there, not with that disappointment always hiding under every smile, behind every gesture. It enraged him as much as it hurt him, because it wasn't like his Ma to be that way. Jesus _Christ_, why did she have to pretend like that? Why couldn't she just come right out with it, yell and scream and tell him how fucking worthless he turned out to be after all? It was so much worse this way, and Bosco wondered with a kind of sick fear if maybe she _knew_ it.

And so that was how the drinking started. Instead of just going home to his own apartment, he stopped at a bar - the same bar where his Ma worked, as it happened. Delicious irony. Delicious irony borne on a wave of pure spur-of-the-moment impulse; the idea of demolishing a few beers (or a few dozen) seemed natural, almost liberating, a kind of worthy experiment in blatant, conscious self-pity. This, after all, was just what you were supposed to do when you hit rock-bottom, wasn't it? Go directly to alcoholic. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. And being a drunken loser was already in his blood, so why the fuck not? Ma drank, Pop drank, Mikey drank (at least until he started tickling his nosehairs with something a little more acerbic), so why not Maurice? Maurice, after all, had made a complete balls-up of his life. If that didn't make him a true Boscorelli, maybe this would.

So Maurice went in, and willingly surrendered himself right into the perfect cliche.

He ended up spending most of the day there, holding up his end of a few halfhearted, senseless conversations with some of the other regulars (most of whom were already intermediate alcoholics themselves), not neglecting to get nicely smashed himself. And he enjoyed it more than he would have guessed. He shot a few games of pool by himself, until his coordination deteriorated to the point where he was forced to switch to the video slot machine in the corner. When he tired of its charm, he went on to lose a few rounds on the battered old _Street Fighter II_ machine that sat next to it.

By late afternoon Vinnie Jurgens was literally wringing his hands with worry. Vinnie was the bartender, a burly, thuggish-looking guy with a shaved head, a snake tattoo above his right ear, and the disposition of a ninety-eight-pound high school principal. He knew Bosco in passing through Rose, knew he was a cop (or used to be), and was quite obviously distressed about what he was witnessing here, sure that it was uncharacteristic and possibly even dangerous behavior. He served Bosco his drinks with a kind of wordless unease until about four o'clock, when he came over to the arcade game and asked Bosco to leave. Politely. Timidly.

Bosco's reply was simple and to the point: "Fuck off."

Vinnie was bigger than him. Stronger than him. It would not have been difficult for Vinnie to forcibly eject Bosco from the premises; Vinnie generally pulled double duty as the bar's bouncer. It was, however, a mostly ceremonial post. He was scary-looking enough so that ninety-nine percent of the time, troublemakers took one look at him and left without having to be asked. Bosco, however, knew the guy was a Milquetoast.

"Look, man," Vinnie said after a moment's consideration, and Bosco could almost hear the clicks and clacks of gears realigning themselves in the man's head as he downshifted into his more natural role as Vinnie the Saintly and Sympathetic Bartender - we're both men of the world, I'm on your side, I can see where you're coming from, et cetera. "Rosie's a great gal. I love her like a sister, and that's the God's honest truth. I know she's had it rough ... I know your dad ..." Here Vinnie uttered and odd little chuckle. It sounded like the engine of a very small car - a VW bug, perhaps - chugging its last chug. "I know he wasn't always such a great guy, right? And your brother, he's had a lot of trouble ..."

"Is this an offer to write my fucking biography?" Bosco asked mildly. He found he wasn't angry; he didn't even bother to look around at Vinnie. He was enthralled by the game's screen, watching owlishly as a monstrous, hairy cartoon Russian beat the tar out of his monstrous, flabby cartoon Sumo wrestler. "Because I should warn you that I'm not big on authors at the moment. You could say that a man of that profession recently pissed all over me."

"What I'm saying is, maybe you should cool your jets a bit. You know?" Vinnie gestured surreptitiously at a few of the other barflies. "These guys, man ... worst part of this job is seeing the downward spiral in progress, if you take my meaning. The _change_. Not _what_ these guys can become, but _how_ they get there. You dig me? Sometimes I want to set up a time-lapse camera behind the bar and see what it really looks like. Maybe make a few of them sit down and watch the tape afterwards. Bitch of it is, it starts innocent. A guy comes in for a few beers in the evening. Needs to get away. His wife left him, caught her screwing around, maybe she caught _him_ screwing around, whatever. Then suddenly he's in every evening. Okay, no harm in that, everybody needs a place to go, right? _Where everybody knows your name, and you're always glad you came_, to quote the old tune. But then he's here during the day as well. Suddenly you realize the guy has no - "

"Sixty-second sociology," Bosco broke in. Still easy and mild. Still not looking up from the game. "Learn this and more at your local community college. Just ask for the bartending course."

Vinnie ran a hand over his bald pate and sighed. "I don't know what's been going on with you, and I'm not gonna pry - "

"Good."

"- but I can see what's happening here, man. I can see you just went through some very bad shit - a major _life-change_, man - and that's a sticky time. Believe me, I know from experience. Your mom, now - she knows, too. Probably your brother could testify to it, as well. I'm just here to tell you that, you know ... it gets better. It really does."

On the game-screen, the monstrous cartoon Russian had been replaced with a grinning cartoon Rastafarian. The Rasta had just soundly annihilated Bosco's Sumo wrestler. Bosco slapped the control panel decisively and, at last, swung on Vinnie. "Listen. I've still got money. I'm still thirsty. I'm not causing any trouble. And I don't remember paying for the psyche evaluation-slash-motivational speech. So get back behind your bar and leave me the fuck alone. You've got customers waiting on you."

Third time was a charm - Vinnie at last gave up and went away. Bosco continued to drink and Vinnie continued to serve him, although the bartender had gone back to his previous state of bemused, mute distress. Bosco didn't know why the guy was so squirmy. His business was his business, and he was quite frankly having a blast at it. It could even be said to be _interesting_. He liked beer as a rule, and he was getting to sample a whole range of different brands as he went along. Coors. Miller. Labatt. Molson. Heineken. It was a feast for the tongue, man ... kind of like Cruz. Bosco burst out laughing at that even though it wasn't very funny. Vinnie gave him a morose, worried look but said nothing.

Bosco finally left at seven that evening. By then he was already coming down off the high and entering what was almost certainly his first trip into alcoholic remorse country - he was getting the complete tour, no doubt about that. He remembered little of Vinnie's soft-spoken warning (besides a few pissy little phrases like "life-change" and "it gets better") but he was coming to most of the same conclusions all by himself. What he was doing was pathetic. Shameful. Maudlin. Dangerous, even. He at least missed Ma before she came in for her shift, but that didn't matter much because word would soon get back to her through Vinnie: her son had kicked off a brand-new career as a professional lush, and he was showing aptitude for the job. _Mondo_ aptitude. Rose would find that interesting. What do you know, folks - the son has at last become the father, so can we get a _hallelujah_? She might even feel bad, maybe regret treating him in the stupid, contradictory way that she had, welcoming him with one hand and pushing him aside with the other. Or she might shrug and say good riddance. Bosco found he didn't really care one way or the other; her opinion of him was probably already as low as it was going to get.

His opinion of _himself_, however, could still go a lot lower. This he found out in short order. When he finally stumbled his way home, he found Ty Davis and John Sullivan waiting for him.

It just _had_ to be Ty and Sully, didn't it? Of the dozens of cops it could have been, and it ends up being that classic team of Five-Five Charlie. More of that delicious irony. Not so long ago, it had been Bosco (and Ty as well, for that matter) trying to dry _Sully_ out. Nothing but contempt for the man who hides at the bottom of a bottle, be it alcohol or pills - so had gone the philosophy of Maurice Boscorelli. And whoops! Now it's Sully looking at _him_, staring at him and making no effort whatsoever to conceal his disgust. There it was again - the looking-glass effect. Suddenly you're on the other side of the fence with no idea how you got there.

So there they stood, Bosco unshaven and half-plastered and soaked like a drowned rat, Ty and Sully stiff and businesslike in their police-issue rainslickers. They told him what had happened that afternoon. They told him that Cruz had apparently gotten up and walked out of the hospital - possibly under her own power - and now nobody knew where she was. They told him that certain people ("certain people" being a cute, indirect way of saying "Detective Schaeffer") were harboring the idea that Bosco might be helping her.

Next came the logical question; where had he been all day?

No sympathy, no joking around, no sense of easy camaraderie. Just honest-to-God suspicion; they _believed_ it. Or at least, they believed it was _possible_ that he would help Cruz, that he would actually go to that hospital and give her a shoulder to lean on, as if his life wasn't already screwed up enough (and as if he owed the woman any such thing). They looked at him with that kind of detached, alien curiosity, the way you'd look at any anonymous skell. It was truly a bad dream, right to the last detail it was a bad dream, one of those fucking _Twilight Zone_ episodes where everybody and everything inexplicably changes overnight, and the people you know are suddenly treating you like a stranger. Or a pariah.

In the end it wasn't hard to convince them that he had nothing to do with Cruz's escape - it was pretty obvious where he'd spent the day and what he'd been doing there. He was too hammered and too confused to be anybody's personal getaway driver. He sent them away and then went inside, where he immediately turned on the TV.

It took less than five minutes to find a pretty anchorwoman on a local station to lay the whole thing down for him.

"A bizarre twist today in the NYPD's unfolding 'Anti-Crime' scandal," the pretty anchor said gravely. "Maritza Cruz, formerly the sergeant in charge of the elite anti-gang unit, disappeared today from Angel of Mercy Hospital, where she was being held under police guard. Cruz was shot by police earlier this week, following an altercation in the hotel room of journalist and best-selling author Aaron Noble, the details of which are still unknown ..."

While the anchor went on to speculate on what those details might be, a black-and-white file photo of Cruz appeared on the screen.

The picture looked like it had been taken in the aftermath of some kind of shootout; Cruz was in the foreground, eyes blazing, face screwed into an obligingly evil sneer, her cheek and forehead streaked with blood. Her blood, or somebody else's? Bosco couldn't tell, but it called up a very distinct impression of _war paint_. She was glaring at something off-camera, her mouth half-open, as if she was just getting ready to yell at somebody. In the background there appeared to be two bodies lying in the street, both covered with sheets. _Bloody_ sheets.

The photo was followed by a short snippet of an NYPD spokesman. The spokesman, whose name was Mallory, defended the department's reputation and reminded everyone (for perhaps the twentieth time since the whole thing began) that the corrupt Anti-Crime team was the exception, not the rule. He also assured the public that even though she was still at large, Cruz was not considered dangerous. In fact, she was probably very weak and would be quickly recaptured when her injuries forced her to seek treatment. In other words, the "escape" amounted to a whole lot of nothin'.

Bosco found the obvious contradiction bitterly funny. Whatever this NYPD mouthpiece might say, Cruz sure looked _dangerous_ in the photograph; a fierce, half-crazed Amazon. He believed that he finally understood what people meant by the phrase _trial by media_. They might as well draw little devil-horns on her in Magic Marker and be done with it.

And it wasn't just the local New York stations getting off on the story; it went right up to the dreaded C-double-_N_. Wolf Blitzer himself was taking a break from Iraq to do a special feature on police corruption in America, as demonstrated by the Fifty-Fifth's Anti-Crime unit. Wolf promised to ask the tough questions, questions such as:

Had people grown too tolerant of the anything-goes vigilante mentality?

Did the NYPD turn a blind eye to Cruz's tactics?

Had the "Blue Wall of Silence" finally crumbled?

How far had this Sergeant Cruz gone?

Did it include murder?

Most importantly, how did this poor girl from the _barrio_ go from idealistic rookie to criminal with a badge in the first place?

Bosco wasn't awfully interested in the answers to any of those questions. As it turned out, he had his own small part in the story. The media had their collective eye fixed mainly on Cruz, of course, but every now and then they would trot out the names of everybody else, apparently just for kicks. No pictures (not yet, anyway), but lots of names: Dade, North, Yoshimura, Marino, Vargas, Payne, Gognitti, and - hold on to your whitey-tighties - none other than _Maurice Louis Boscorelli_, Rose's good boy. Most of the others were looking at far more serious charges than he was, and yet there he was all the same, lumped right in with the rest of them. Trial by media, guilt by association, call it whatever you want. Once they decide to hang you, you might as well bring the rope to the party yourself.

And now they had a tasty new morsel to chew on - _Mad-Dog Cruz escapes! Story at eleven!_

Bosco couldn't figure out where she thought she could go or what she was trying to achieve, and nobody was offering up any theories. She had nowhere to hide, no living relatives and very few friends who could (or would) help her. Her face was well-circulated in the news, and he didn't doubt that she was in terrible shape; when somebody gets shot in the movies, they wince, they grunt, and then they keep right on running, shooting, wisecracking, and screwing. In real life, the human body is rarely so accommodating. Mallory was right - Cruz was as good as caught. Bosco felt truly sorry for her, and he now believed that she must be delusional at the very least. She had to be, if this was what she'd been reduced to.

He switched off the TV around eight o'clock and went to bed. But despite being drunk and exhausted, he didn't sleep for a long time. Around the time Cruz was accosting Aaron Noble outside the Bridgeview hotel, Bosco was lying awake in his bed, thinking about his life, his future (or lack thereof), his job, his friends, his mother, Ty, Sully, Vinnie Jurgens the Saintly and Sympathetic Bartender, and - drum roll, please - Faith Yokas. Of these thoughts, Faith dominated. This did not surprise him. It always came back around to her, and he'd long since given up trying to figure out why. It was a weird kind of infatuation, that was all, one that had nothing to do with love or lust or even friendship, one that always led him back to her.

And lying there in the dark, it occurred to him that there was a pattern, a pattern of behavior, of repetition. He'd spent almost eight months under Cruz's thumb, eight months that saw him pushing Faith further and further away from him, talking down to her, regurgitating Cruz's self-righteous bullshit at her. So unapologetic, so arrogant, so sure of himself.

Then it had all fallen apart, and back to Faith he'd crawled. Nobody else to go to, nobody he could trust as much as he could trust her. Begging for help, pissing away his pride and his dignity to admit he was wrong. And when Faith had taken things to the extreme in Noble's hotel room, he'd responded by turning on her _again_, only this time instead of arrogance it was an almost prissy, indignant shock, as if she'd decided to start working the pole at a strip-club. _Oh, how could she? Oh, how dare she?_

He couldn't figure that out now. He guessed it might have been no more than a simple, childish need to look down his nose at her, to feel superior to her again. To be back on the moral high ground. Which was ridiculous, because whatever way you wanted to look at it, it was all on his head, and it had been from the beginning. And now things were wrong between them again.

And somehow, irrational as it was, _that_ was the worst part of the whole miserable train wreck.

* * *

The dashboard clock read 8:52 AM when Bosco pulled into a vacant parking space across from Faith's building - a bit early in the morning to be paying an unexpected (and almost certainly _unwanted_) house call. It was also Saturday, so the kids would probably be here; he didn't think he'd be comfortable saying what he had to say in front of them - Charlie in particular. And there was also the Fred factor to consider. Bosco had neither seen nor spoken to Fred Yokas since before the hotel room, but he thought he could make an accurate guess as to how Fred saw the situation; Bosco had put his wife into a position where she could have been killed, maimed, or thrown in jail. Safe bet the man would want to kill him on sight.

This idea had seemed perfectly rational last night, hadn't it? Of course it had, because ideas like this always seem rational when you're drunk. You get thinking that it will be easy, that everything will just kind of fall back into place, and everybody will end up hugging and making up because that's just how these things are supposed to go.

But being here now, _for real_, ready to make the actual attempt to talk to Faith ... it was a little like being back in that washroom at Mercy again. Things are okay as long as you're someplace safe and far from the action; the reality you face later is quite a bit harder to swallow.

There were the practical considerations - considerations such as confused kids and pissed-off husbands - but there was also an unshakable sense of the past and how bad things had really gotten. Those things kept coming back on him, a dirty little mental scrapbook of the past few months that his mind kept waving in his face. Mostly he kept coming back to that night in the locker room, the night he and Faith had agreed to split up. It was just after the fiasco over that money from the armored car, and somehow an argument - one of many - about the ethics of lying had turned into something else, something far more explosive, and he'd found himself dragging things into it he had no business touching. Stuff about her ability as a mother. Her _reliability_ as a mother, and as a wife. Her relationship with Emily and Charlie. Her relationship with Fred. And it had really worked, too, hadn't it? He'd really gotten to her. Sure had. He'd exposed the tenderest emotional nerve and then sank his teeth right into it.

And he'd called her a murderer. Right to her face, he'd all but accused her of trying to execute Cruz. The shame of that was bad enough; what was worse was that a part of him - a part he kept trying to silence - still believed it might be true.

So why the hell _was_ he here, anyway? Daylight has a way of putting things into perspective, and when you came right down to it, this was actually pretty pathetic. Like dropping into his Ma's bar, it was another act of wretched, self-pitying desperation. And to what end? What was the expected result?

_I'm trying to make things right,_ he thought defiantly at himself, unaware that in less than twenty-four hours he would hear this same sentiment expressed by someone else, and under much bloodier circumstances. _That's all. Just trying to make things right. _

_And what the hell does _that_ mean?_ another voice spoke up immediately. _"Making things right." That's not a reason - that's chick-flick horseshit. Who are you now, Doctor-Fucking-Phil? You know what you do? You put this car in gear right now and you drive home. Or go back to the damned bar and pick up where you left off yesterday. Anything. Just leave this, just leave her alone. Let sleeping dogs lie, for Christ's sake. _

But he couldn't do that, much as he might want to. Thinking about patterns of behavior last night had unearthed another memory, one that - on the surface - had nothing to do with where he was now. This memory had narrowed itself into a kind of three or four-second loop, like a grotesque little filmstrip. And in this four-second filmstrip, Bosco was back in the squalid, stifling-hot apartment of Glen Hobart, face-down on the floor and able to see nothing but the flickering screen of Hobart's TV. The ESU sharpshooter himself was standing above him, clad only in boxers and a dirty undershirt, holding Bosco's own gun in his hand.

From the floor, Bosco: _Come on, Glen, we can work this out._

From above, Hobart: _Work what out? My crappy life? And you want to be like me ..._

_... I ought to just shoot you before you screw up the lives of everybody who loves you. _

Bosco had read absolutely nothing into that statement at the time. Nothing. Just the ravings of your garden-variety Man On The Edge. But now it seemed that Hobart - wife-beater, NRA poster-boy, sniper extraordinaire - had had a gift for prophecy. And Bosco had ended up fulfilling it quite neatly, hadn't he? He had, in Glen's precise terms, screwed up the lives of everybody who loved him, and as pathetic and self-indulgent as it was, he had to do something to fix it. He supposed it was his own miserable answer to that twelve-step program A.A. puts you through, where you go out and apologize to all the people you've hurt. If he recalled correctly, you're not supposed to take no for an answer. You go in quick and dirty, say what you have to say, and then fade into the background again.

That was what he was here to do. That, and nothing more.

He killed the Mustang's engine and went in.


	14. Chapter 8, Part II

* * *

What have I become?

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know

Goes away in the end

* * *

Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"

* * *

Chapter 8 Continued

II.

Charlie Yokas answered the door.

It wasn't Faith, true, but it also wasn't _Fred_, and Bosco found himself breathing a surprisingly heartfelt sigh of relief. It wasn't so much that he was afraid Fred would beat him up; it was not knowing how to react if the man actually tried. Fred had every right to come out swinging, and Bosco wasn't in a fighting mood.

He looked down at Charlie and attempted a smile.

Then he said, with horribly miscalculated good cheer: "Hey, big guy!"

Charlie only stared up at him as if he'd never clapped eyes on Bosco before in his life. The kid was still in his PJ's (they advertised something called _SpongeBob SquarePants_, whatever the hell that was), and was holding a soggy-looking piece of toast loose in his right hand. Bosco could hear the shrill, feverish babble of cartoons coming from the living room.

_Saturday morning_, he thought grimly, and wished bitterly that Emily had answered the door. At least she was old enough to understand some of what was going on. Charlie, on the other hand, was looking at him with the canny suspicion of a kid who has just been offered candy (and maybe a nice ride to the library) by a stranger.

"Hi," Charlie said hesitantly.

The "Hi" was not punctuated with the more usual "Uncle B." Bosco felt an unexpected and rather huffy flash of indignance. He was prepared to accept anger from Fred and from Faith herself, but he had not counted on her turning her whole _family_ against him.

Still, he held onto the big, artificial smile as he pushed on: "Can I ... uh ... can I talk to your mom?"

There was a long pause - one that felt far longer than it probably was - before Charlie said: "Okay."

But the kid made no move to go get her. Charlie just kept staring up at him, his expression hovering on that odd line somewhere between suspicion and fear. And that was stupid, because what did _Charlie_ have to be afraid of? Bosco wasn't the bad guy here.

_Right. I'm not the one who shot somebody out of _spite_. That'd be your mom, kid. _

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, _wrong_. Wrong way to think.

Bosco stiffened as Faith's voice - sounding drowsy and out of sorts - called from somewhere farther back in the apartment. "Charlie? Charlie, is that somebody at the door?"

Charlie made no reply. He was now looking at Bosco with open mistrust.

What the hell was the problem? What the hell was Faith _telling_ this kid?

"Charlie!" Faith snapped, and Bosco could hear muffled footsteps approaching now. Muffled, but coming in quick, ominous little stomps. And her voice had taken on a clipped, waspish quality. "I told you _never_ to answer the door unless - "

She appeared behind Charlie and stopped short when she saw who was standing on her doorstep.

Bosco stayed motionless, allowing nothing to show through on his face, bracing for the reaction. T-minus five and counting.

But the reaction was not as bad as he might have expected. Faith's face cycled through a startlingly quick range of expressions, finally settling on something that looked like plain old exasperation. He breathed another little internal sigh of relief, and he couldn't really say he blamed her - here he was, Maurice Boscorelli, standing in humble supplication in front of her. _Again_.

"It's only Bosco," Charlie said timidly, and then disappeared back into the apartment, quiet as a ghost..

Not _Uncle Bosco_. Not _Uncle B_. Just _Bosco_.

Faith peered blearily at him. He was conscious of how terrible he looked (three days since he and his razor had parted company, and his face was advertising a catastrophic hangover), but she really didn't look all that much better. If anything, he thought she looked _worse_. She was wearing a pair of ratty sweatpants and an old T-shirt that hung droopily on her like loose, dead skin. Her eyes were flat and sleepless, her hair wild, and the way Charlie had skittered away from her suggested that she might not be very easy to live with these days. So _that_ was why the kid was all shifty - Mom was on the warpath. Mom was feeling low. Mom, much like Bosco himself, didn't look to have been getting much in the way of sleep just lately.

And there was something else, as well, something odd: her hand was bandaged. Her right hand. And the last two fingers had been set into a splint.

"What the hell do you want?" she said coldly.

Well, that was a good start - at least it implied interest. _What the hell do you want? _ Not _Get out of here_. No, that wasn't too bad. Not too bad at all.

"Just ... just wanted to talk," he began carefully, and was not surprised to find he couldn't meet her eyes. "Okay?"

Faith clicked her tongue thoughtfully, her upper lip twitching up at the corner in what he thought was a totally unconscious sneer. "You can talk." She pointed over his shoulder and down the hall. "Then you can leave."

He nodded, his throat suddenly very dry. She had opened the door now, both literally and figuratively. He could talk - she would listen. They were down to it now. And suddenly everything seemed to be a distraction, an invitation to stall for more time; he could hear nothing but the fuzzy chatter of Charlie's cartoons, and he was keenly aware of the smell around him - that unmistakable, unnameable apartment-building-hallway smell. A dry, not entirely unpleasant mix of last night's dinners, lingering perfume, cologne, deodorant, and cigarette smoke. A _people_ smell, the smell of closely-packed strangers.

His eyes again found her right hand. Her right hand, with its snazzy little bandage/splint combination. "What ..." His voice caught and he swallowed. "Uh ... what'd you ...what'd you do?"

For a moment Faith only looked at him, clearly debating whether or not to indulge him with an answer. Then she slowly brought the hand up to eye-level and considered it blandly, as if the injury belonged to someone else and held no real interest for her.

Then she lowered it and offered Bosco a sunken, humorless smile. "I had another of my famous moments of clarity," she said. Then the smile disappeared abruptly, as if a switch had been flipped. "Talk if you're gonna talk, Bosco. Do it fast. I'm tired. My head hurts. I need to take a piss. So get on with it."

Bosco swallowed. "I've been ... I've been doing a lot of thinking, you know?" He stopped, cringing a bit at the sound of his own voice, and at the words themselves. It all sounded steady and very sensible when he rehearsed it in his head, but out in the air it just sounded forced, delivered in a slimy little mumble. "Uh ... doing a lot of thinking about ... y'know ... about the way things went down, and - "

"So you really had nothing to do with what happened yesterday?"

Bosco blinked, thrown off track. It took him a moment to realize she was talking about Cruz. Cruz and her little Houdini act.

"No," he said, curbing another flare of annoyance. His train of thought was very fragile right now, and interrupting somebody while they were talking was rude even if they _were_ stammering it all out, like a child reciting a poem to a bored and hostile class. "No. No, I didn't."

Faith nodded, either missing the edge in his tone or choosing to ignore it. "I kept telling myself you'd never do anything that stupid, but I wasn't sure."

Bosco kept his expression carefully neutral. He didn't come here to discuss Cruz with her. He sure as _hell_ didn't come here for a repeat performance of that humiliating little interrogation he'd suffered from Ty and Sully last night. Faith was watching him, and he could no longer read what was going on there; she had gone blank, impassive - exactly like Ty and Sully. That mindless, petulant anger was nipping at the back of his mind again, trying to come back on him. He was trying to be civil about this, wasn't he? Didn't that count for anything?

_Stay cool. So she started things off by sticking a pin in you. Cry me a fuckin' river. You deserve it. _

"Well, you can be sure," he said tightly. "I'm finished with her. I thought we were clear on that."

"Yeah, well, she might not be finished with you."

"What?"

Faith sighed angrily. "Didn't anybody _talk_ to you about this, Bosco?"

"I had a visit from Ty and Sully last night," he said slowly, resigning himself to the fact that the subject was open and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. "They ... uh ... they wanted to know where I was all day."

"And where were you?"

He shifted uneasily. Telling her he'd spent an entire day in a bar wasn't apt to help him out much here. His eyes flicked over her shoulder; behind her, Charlie passed silently on his way from the kitchen to the living room, now carrying a bowl of cereal. He glanced nervously at Bosco as he went by; again there was no smile, no real _recognition_. Then he was gone.

Faith was watching him, still with that odd, disconcerting lack of expression. The initial hostility she'd greeted him with seemed to have suddenly drained away.

_Oh, why not just tell her the truth? Tell her just to see what she does with it. _

But Faith had apparently decided he wasn't going to answer and saved him the trouble. "I had a visitor last night, too," she said. "Swersky came by. In person. He wanted to post an RMP outside the building."

"What? Why?"

She looked at him levelly. "They found guns in Cruz's apartment, Bosco. Her off-duty weapon, plus two unregistered handguns and a couple of boxes of ammunition." She uttered a short, anxious chuckle. "They think there might have been more. She made it all the way home, you know. After she got out of Mercy. They think that she's probably armed right now ... you know, wherever she is. Seems they think she might try to come after me."

Bosco digested that. So _that_ was the general assumption; they figured Cruz was trying to turn this thing into a Charles Bronson movie, that she was out to get the people who hurt her. Stupid as the idea sounded, he supposed it made a certain amount of sense. Why else would she do something so desperate, so futile? Why, _revenge_, of course - it was what she lived for. And by now she was probably far enough beyond rational thought to actually believe she had a chance of succeeding. In her mind she could be gunning for any of them - Faith, Schaeffer, Noble ... perhaps Chris Reyes, assuming Cruz knew the truth about her. Even Swersky, come to that.

And, of course, she could be after _him_. If Ty and Sully had known about this last night, they had neglected to mention it to him.

_There's no RMP out there_, he thought, wondering vaguely if Faith might be making it all up. _No unmarked car. I'd have seen it. I'm _sure_ I'd have seen it_.

Eerily, Faith seemed to pick up on the thought. "I told Swersky not to bother," she said, and laughed wearily. "I ... I don't think she's a threat to anybody anymore. Even if she is ... I can take care of my own family, right? I'm not gonna sit here and let a couple of cops with better things to do sit around and babysit me."

She actually seemed to try to inject a kind of sardonic humor into the last sentence. She didn't quite pull it off, and for the first time Bosco noticed something else about her - not only did she look pale and unrested, she actually seemed to look _thinner_ somehow. Nobody could lose that much weight in a few days, he knew that, but there it was. Her face wasn't what you'd call gaunt, but there was something different, something that seemed to have ... diminished.

"I just want this to be _over_," she said softly, and there was the barest hint of a tremor in her voice. "Can't you understand that?"

The swell of anger was much more powerful this time, much tougher to get a handle on. Thoughts of Cruz and her guns and her supposed revenge fantasies broke under the weight of that one maddening little word; _over_. Faith wanted it _over_. That was pretty strange, because the way he saw it, it was _already_ over for her. Faith's life was still more or less the same as it had been a week ago. Faith still had something to make of her future. Faith wasn't being dragged through the papers. The closest they ever got to her was when they described what went down in the hotel room, whereupon they would simply say Cruz was "shot by police." This was the extent of Faith Yokas's identity in the entire matter: _Shot by Police_.

According to Schaeffer, Bosco had gotten off _lightly_. It occurred to him now that the IAB detective had things a bit confused. Faith was the only one getting off lightly here.

"What did you want to talk to me about, Bosco?"

He looked up at her, deliberately taking in the pallid face, the slouched posture, the bandaged hand, the baggy sweatpants (there was what looked like a spot of mustard near the knee), the old T-shirt. Written across the front of the shirt in big, bold red letters was the legend, "Me Boss, You Not." Fred had probably bought that for her. Fred, or maybe Emily. It was the kind of novelty you're supposed to buy your loved one to poke light fun at their foibles. Me Boss, You Not. Cute.

_She's not getting off lightly. _Nobody_ got off lightly in this. Christ, _look_ at her. This is ripping her apart, and a good chunk of that is your fault. So drop the drama-queen bullshit. Take a page from the book of Vinnie the Saintly and Sympathetic Bartender and cool your jets._

"I wanted to apologize, that's all," he said, back on top of things and relieved to finally hear some real sincerity in his own voice. "Everything I said, all the stuff about you ... and Emily ... you know, in the locker room that night ... and ... that stuff I said in the washroom that night at Mercy. I was wrong. About everything. You ... you didn't do anything wrong in that hotel room and ... and I'm okay with it now ... Cruz put your back up against the wall, and I understand -"

_Now you're babbling._

Bosco shut his mouth. He was, however, more or less satisfied. As artless as it was, it was out and he felt it had gotten the point across.

Faith, though, was still unreadable.

"That's it?" she said.

Bosco nodded mutely.

"So ... you're _okay_ with it?" she said distantly. She was staring at a point somewhere above his right shoulder now, staring _through_ him. "You're ... 'okay' with it."

"Yeah," he said doubtfully, feeling the short hairs starting to stand up and prickle on the back of his neck. He could smell a fight coming out of this. Another fight, another argument, maybe another screaming onslaught of the Mercy-washroom caliber. He'd struck a nerve, though he was damned if he knew what it was. "I just mean that I wasn't ... I wasn't fair to you -"

"You're here to give me your _approval_. Is that it?"

"No," he said, knowing in that moment that it was finished, that nothing was going to come of this, nothing at all. "No, Faith, I ... all I wanted to say was ... y'know, I'm sorr-"

"You know I almost got as far as Roll Call?" she overrode him suddenly. She was still looking off over his shoulder, her tone soft and thoughtful, as if she were talking to herself. "That's how close I was, Bosco. Full uniform, gun on my hip, on my way to Roll Call. That's how close I came. God only knows how I would have acted if I'd actually made it out there."

"I don't know what you - "

"Everything's changed, Bosco," she said, and at last she met his eyes. "All of it. Everything's different now. I tried pretending it wasn't, but it is, and that's why I'm leaving."

"Leaving," he repeated numbly, not quite able to make it a question.

"The job. I'm quitting."

Bosco swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat. He remembered something he'd said to Schaeffer. Something he'd all but _screamed_ at Schaeffer as the detective had taunted him in that quiet, subtle way of his - _shit, I was gonna quit anyway!_ How easily that had come, saying he would have quit with or without an IAB investigation. And it had been a pile of shit, of course - just his own stupid little variation on one of the oldest and sulkiest lines in the book; _you can't fire me - I quit!_ Given the choice, he never would have quit. And discovering that Faith was doing it voluntarily -

_(I ought to just shoot you before you screw up the lives of everybody who loves you)_

because of something _he_ had started, something _he_ had done, sparked a new and almost suicidal shame.

He smiled crookedly. "Faith, you can't - "

"I can't?" she broke in, but her tone was still mild, still almost serene. "I can't? I can't _what_? Can't quit? Can't let Cruz win? Can't let her drive me away from my job? Been there, Bosco. I've been over it all, again and again, and none of it matters anymore. I need to start over." She shrugged. "So that's what I'm doing."

He tried to think of something to say to that and was not surprised to find that he had nothing left. His throat had locked tight; a cold hand seemed to have wrapped stealthily around his insides and was squeezing out a slow, sickening rhythm. The filmstrip was running again, not just Hobart this time but _all_ of it; the fight in the locker room, the bloodbath in the hotel room, the washroom at the hospital, Schaeffer bringing down the ax, staying with Ma and seeing the way she always looked at him when she thought his back was turned, going into that bar and drinking himself into a sulky, self-pitying stupor while some milksop bartender lectured down to him, standing in the rain being interrogated by two men who used to be his friends ...

And now he was here. Now he'd come here like this, nothing else to do in his life but try for some petty kind of absolution so he could sleep a little easier.

_And she knew it, too_, he thought suddenly. _Faith knew I was coming. She's been sitting here waiting for me, knowing I'd be back here sooner or later. She had this all ready in advance. Planning her side of it the same way I planned mine._

"You know," she murmured. "I look at you now ... I see you now, and I think to myself, _this is what it took to get through to him_. You know? _This_ is what it took to smarten you up. I've been listening to the news, and the way they talk about this thing ... They're gonna drag you down, Bosco. You'll be right there next to the rest of them. The _worst_ of them. You don't deserve that, and I'm sorry for it. I don't know ... something good might come out of it for you in the long run. I'd like to think so."

She pulled in a long, deep breath, something that only added to the sense that this was a planned speech, planned and often-rehearsed in her head, probably in those leaden, sleepless hours after she went to bed. There was no fight left in her, none of the bitterness he'd left her with that night in the hospital. And why should there be? While he was spinning his fucking wheels and obsessing about _making things right_, Faith had moved on. It didn't look like sleep came very easily to her, but she had moved on all the same. He was Maurice Boscorelli, the other half of Five-Five David, and pitifully enough, that was where a lot of him still was. He was a part of something that Faith had already discarded, and for the first time his future, bleak and empty as it was, seemed to take on a new, diamond-edged reality for him. It was one thing to look ahead in terms of _years_ and not be able to see anything; he found now that he couldn't even see himself in a week.

_So here we are. You did it just like you planned - went in quick and dirty. Now it's done. So what's the verdict, pal? Did you "make things right?" _

_Do things feel any more _right_ to you than they did yesterday?_

Faith glanced back into the apartment. "Fred'll be up soon," she said. She paused - almost for effect, he thought - and then drove the point home with no subtlety whatsoever: "So ... you'd better go now."

Bosco nodded. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely, believing this to be the worst moment of his life, knowing nothing of the horror he would witness by the end of the day. "I just wanted you to know that. That's all."

"I know it. I know you are, Bosco." She started to close the door. "I am, too."


	15. Chapter 9: Cruz

Well, it's been quite a while since the last update, I know. Circumstances over the spring and summer seemed to conspire to keep me away from my computer and from working on this story - all the recent work has been done almost entirely over the past couple of weeks. But as of now - hopefully - things will go more smoothly and updates will be more frequent. I need to get this thing done; for myself, but also because the reviews have been so kind and I feel I owe you all a proper resolution.

I have to apologize _again_, though - another reason for the long delay is because I've re-edited the first eight chapters. I went back to fix some mistakes and ended up doing some fairly significant surgery, and what I came out with was _A Moment of Clarity, Draft 2_. I added a few new scenes, clarified details, and inserted a lot of new Cruz-related stuff in Chapters 3, 5 and 7. More theory on how her relationship with Lettie worked, and deeper detail all around. Though it's still the same alternate-universe story rooted in Season Four, I added some references and character cameos from Season Five and Six just to keep things fresh.

I sorta feel like a bastard, making everybody go back and re-read everything, but a lot of this stuff begged to be shoe-horned in, especially all the little details we've learned about Cruz in the meantime - the thing about the "rat" J.D. Hart and her old partner killing himself seemed to fit really well with what's happening here.

Detail, detail, detail. I'm obsessed with it :)

* * *

Chapter 9

_Cruz_

I.

It was twenty minutes after ten in the morning, the downpour was still relentless, the air was cool and crisp, and Maritza Cruz was being violently sick.

She stood doubled over with her good hand pressed to her stomach like a performer taking a low bow, shuddering through a series of deep, wrenching heaves that seemed to start right from her heels. She had no clear idea of where she was or how she might have ended up here; at the moment most of her conscious mind was lost in a white, flickering haze of agony. Because this wasn't just _being sick_, oh no - it was nothing as simple, nothing as mildly distasteful as _being sick_; this was being _torn apart_. Physically _torn apart_. Her guts churned and she felt as if all the blood in her body was being forced up into her head under about six hundred pounds of pressure, and yet all of that was still purely secondary, not the problem but only a symptom of it; her shoulder was where the action was, her goddam fucking son-of-a-bitching _shoulder_, that new center of her being. The pain was on a new and altogether different level, pain that was trying to drown the world, and yet even as she felt herself starting to black out the vomiting just went on and on - she had been grabbed by some titanic, merciless, unimaginably strong hand that was wringing her out like a washcloth.

And then it subsided. It subsided and her stomach settled and the world began to piece itself back together in disjointed patches. She saw that she was in an alley. A narrow alley. There was a rain-streaked concrete wall in front of her. She could hear music coming in faint from some nearby building - gangsta-rap, by the sound - a low, arrhythmic _thud-thud-THUD-thud_ that kept time with the pounding in her head with uncanny precision. The rain drummed a steady rasp on the pavement and on her head and shoulders, and under _that_ she could hear the faster and feverish sound of water dripping onto metal, a garbage can lid maybe, _tink-tink-tink-tink_. And she could hear a car somewhere in the middle of the whole mess, its engine idling a few feet off to her left.

That would be Noble's car. Aaron Noble. Right. He was standing somewhere behind her, pulling nervous lookout duty.

They'd been on their way to meet his contact. His new biker contact, the mysterious Rene Marchand - the guy everybody apparently called Iggy, because apparently he looked like Iggy Pop. They'd been on their way to meet with Iggy (for _Noble_ to meet with Iggy; she would stay in the car) when the nausea had come up on her with zero warning and no room for argument, and Noble had pulled them over with maybe three seconds to spare.

And to his credit, he'd reacted fast.

Good boy. Good ol' reliable writer-boy.

Cruz slumped against the wall in front of her and let out a long, shivering breath, giving her half-delirious thanks to God (or whatever powers-that-be) that she had tied her hair back before the fun started. And praying to those same powers-that-be that it was over.

She had never experienced anything remotely like that in her entire life. _Never_. And she never wanted to again.

"Did anyone ever tell you what a _marvelous_ traveling companion you are, Cruz?" Noble asked from behind her. He somehow managed to sound jolly, frantic, contemptuous and utterly indifferent at the same time. "Literally a new surprise around every corner!"

"_Shut up!_" she gasped.

Then another wave of nausea hit her like a punch in the belly, and over she went again.

She would have expected it to be a little easier this time, a little less intense, but it wasn't. If anything, it was worse. The pain was monstrous. The pain was _impossible_. That enormous hand was squeezing her again and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe and she couldn't move and the pain was _impossible_. She had the vague impression that Noble was still talking to her, still making his insipid smartass observations, but the words had gone furry and distant. The whole world seemed to be slipping into a dirty gray fog.

She was going to die here. Right now, right here in this alley, she was going to die, and through the haze it occurred to her how ironic that was - how _fitting_, really - because to die thrashing and puking in an alley was supposed to have been Lettie's karma.

And then somehow it was over again and she was through it, perfectly alive and still standing upright.

Cruz stared blindly down at the ground, down into the mess she'd made, at the rain that was already diluting it, washing it away, hardly able to believe that she could have come through such an ordeal not once but _twice._ Her legs were weak and rubbery and her stomach was an acrid little knot and her entire body had become a glassy sunburst of pain ... but she was still here all the same. Still here and still breathing the air, and if anything things seemed _clearer_ now, her senses oddly heightened. She could hear the low mutter of Noble's car, gangsta-rap from some nearby window (she was even able to recognize the song - it was _Guerillas in Tha Mist_ by Da Lench Mob, a favorite of Lettie's back in the day), the white-noise hiss of the rain, all with that terrible radiant clarity. She felt the drops pelting the back of her head, running down her cheeks, down the back of her neck, and it brought Lettie back yet again - Lettie on the ski slopes that day three years ago, putting snow down her back and laughing.

_You have to stop now, Maritza. You have to bring this to an end. _

The Voice of Doubt again. Still with her. The voice of her father. Jaime Cruz's voice as she imagined it would sound, as she imagined he would be if he could see her now, and she supposed that was why now, whenever she imagined she heard him, it sounded like he was weeping. Because he never would have wanted her to come to this, would he? Surely not. Absolutely not.

But she _couldn't_ stop. There was absolutely no question of making a conscious decision to stop, any more than Lettie could have just thrown her dope out the window any old time and gone cold turkey. She was lost in this now, this was _her_ addiction. For Lettie it had been crystal meth and for Maritza it was the drive to go on, go on, go on, even though she was coming apart at the seams. All of her complacent little reasons were gone now, all the self-important, self-indulgent bluster about not letting Schaeffer win, about taking Buford out as some kind of ideological victory over her enemies. She had discarded them all, shucked them like dead skin, and now there was only Lettie, Lettie was dead but Lettie still held all of her, she couldn't stop, she had failed her and this was atonement and _she could never stop_.

There was this or there was nothing.

Cruz began to cry. She couldn't actually spare the energy to cry but she managed well enough all the same; there didn't seem to be anything else to do, and just lately it seemed to come so much more easily to her.

Then her stomach gave another watery heave, and she braced herself for another onslaught. This one would finish her. She was sure of it. This one would sweep her away.

She _willed_ it to sweep her away.

But no onslaught came. She retched loudly but didn't produce much more than a few brownish strings of bile; most of this morning's meager breakfast was now being washed into the gutter. Said breakfast had consisted of two dry pancakes and a bottle of water - about all she thought she could handle - bought about an hour ago from a small mom 'n pop restaurant called, of all things, _Olympic Gold_.

Breakfast courtesy of her gracious host.

Cruz looked woozily up at him.

Noble watched her indifferently, his hands in his pockets. He had that look on his face again, one part pity and three parts disgust, and Cruz was suddenly struck by the exquisite _strangeness_ of this state of affairs; she was in an alley, puking her guts out in the pouring rain in front of a celebrated, semi-famous journalist. A man who hosted book signings in fancy stores, a man who did TV interviews and appeared on panel discussion shows like _Politically Incorrect_. A man who probably made more from royalties on his shitty books than she would have seen in a year on the job.

Behind him, a teenager in a bulky black trenchcoat passed the alley. His eyes lit on Noble's idling Mercedes, then flicked to Noble himself, then finally moved on to Cruz. There was a momentary and almost imperceptible flash of suspicion, enough to allow Cruz to see the scene through his eyes - a scraggly woman standing over a puddle of puke, next to a sinister-looking middle-aged man in a battered denim jacket. In an alley. It sounded like the build-up to a bad punchline.

Noble suddenly stepped in front of Cruz, arms spread like a cop shooing away gawkers - _nothing to see here, folks_. His back was to her, but she could hear the broad smile in his tone when he spoke. "My lady here has a bun in her oven," Noble said to the kid. "The morning sickness hits her particularly hard. Do you mind?"

The kid's expression didn't change, but it was clear he had already decided that Noble and Cruz (and any buns she might have in her oven) weren't his business.

" 'gratulations," he muttered, and moved on without looking back.

Noble turned to Cruz and favored her with a sloppy, sarcastic grin that was very clear in its meaning: _see how quick I am on the draw? _Under any other circumstances, it would have been laughable.

And this, she had learned, was typical Noble. His take on this mad partnership had turned out to be something of a surprise. They'd been together for a little over twelve hours now, and though she had already given him a small amount of meth from her supply ("grease for the wheel" as he called it), controlling him with drugs hardly even seemed necessary - he had become quickly and smoothly immersed in the Great Writer's Adventure. They hadn't been out of the Bridgeview's parking lot more than five minutes before Noble brought the car to a halt and demanded to hear an exact, detailed outline of her plan. Granted, part of that was probably simple concern for himself and his own safety (he was in the hands of someone he probably thought of as a _desperate criminal_, after all) but there had been an almost boyish curiosity underneath the discomfort.

Cruz had been more than happy to indulge it. She simply insisted that it would go down like almost any other sting: Noble would meet with Buford, probably in a Disciples-owned business or warehouse or some such appropriately shady place. He would get his interview; Cruz would take up an ambush position outside. When the meeting broke and Buford came out, Cruz would zero in on him and open fire. Just like any other sting ... except she would have no backup, and a roughly one-hundred-percent chance of being mowed down by Buford's boys. Or maybe even by Buford himself.

The question of how farfetched this plan was didn't seem to occur to Noble. It did, however, occur to Cruz. It occurred to her a _lot_, and she supposed there was some irony in that. Noble was purely along for the ride. He didn't give a shit what happened to her after the dust settled; all he asked was that she wait until he was clear before she started any trouble. Beyond that, he was very complacent about the whole thing. Very _agreeable_. Cruz gave him a little meth - Noble said thanks with a smile. She demanded he hand over the .45 automatic he was carrying - Noble handed it over with minimal grumbling. He was so relaxed, in fact, that at one point he even put his head back and slept away a good five hours.

Such was life with her faithful pet writer.

But Cruz was getting more and more uneasy. She kept telling herself that this was exactly what she wanted - after all, Noble docile and cooperative was better than Noble ill-tempered and difficult. But this almost eager willingness to play her game made her edgy. He was like the timid draftee who gets shoved out onto the battlefield and immediately discovers a latent - and murderous - taste for war. She could never let her guard down around him, not for a second, no matter how agreeable he seemed. She had wanted to sleep, she had _needed_ to sleep, and yet she hadn't dared, not even when he dropped off himself. Her physical state was getting worse by the hour, and she had to be careful not to allow him to see it, to not give him any ideas or openings. He was still an addict, and she was holding an easy supply of his drug hostage; that was what you might call some very volatile math. She was weak and sick and badly hurt - he was strong and healthy and could overpower her easily if the mood struck him, gun or no gun.

_But he won't have to do that_, her father's voice whispered. _Why would he, when all he has to do is wait? You're dying, Maritza. You have to see this for what it is now. You have to see that this can never be what you wanted it to be. Never. You have to stop. You are _dying

Cruz closed her eyes and grimly drowned the voice out. She was getting good at it.

She had her good arm braced against the wall in front of her, and it was weakening. Weakening, trembling, and threatening to give. They had to get moving again, and fast, but she was still too petrified of setting off another chain-reaction of pain, something which could possibly lead to another puking fit. The music had stopped but there was still the beat of the rain and that thick pounding in her head; that small kernel of pain behind her eye had now grown into a heavy, hot steel ball bearing that was now rolling back and forth between her temples.

And there was a _sound_, as well. A sound, not in her ears but right in her head. A drilling, discordant buzz, like a beehive in the center of her mind.

And pain. Pain everywhere.

She sensed Noble shuffling behind her. "Cruz ..."

_My addiction_, she thought hollowly. _This is my addiction. _

Cruz mentally drew herself together, something that was getting harder and harder to do. Something that made her think - absurdly - of patching and re-patching a moth-eaten quilt until it was worn down to bare threads. She spat, swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, and nodded.

Then she started to straighten up, trying to make the movement look easy and fluid, and just barely managed not to cry out.

No weakness. She could show no weakness in front of him.

"Cruz," he repeated. "Look, you'd better - "

"Car," she croaked shortly. Then she swung around in a jerky about-face and lurched past him towards the Mercedes. Noble had to skitter aside to avoid being bowled over. She tottered over to the car, lowered herself delicately into the passenger seat, and exhaled.

Good as it was to be off her feet again, the atmosphere inside Noble's car was not a whole lot more comfortable than standing out in the rain. The Mercedes was not a rental; it was Noble's personal property, kept in storage when he was out of town. According to him he'd taken many a cross-country road trip in the old gal, and Cruz could believe it. The car had begun life as a top-of-the-line luxury sedan, but those days were past now. The upholstery was cracked and peeling and cratered with cigarette burns. The stereo had been torn out and amateurishly replaced with a ratty tape deck that might have been new when Reagan was in the White House. The interior smelled like a college dorm room; tobacco, old farts, aftershave and feet. And Noble apparently didn't go anywhere unprepared to meet his fans, because there were about ten copies of his bestseller, _Blue Line Fever_, strewn about the back seat amidst a litter of soft drink cans, road maps, a snow brush, and an old blanket that was probably responsible for about half the smell.

No wonder she'd gotten sick.

Cruz watched her gracious host as he jogged nimbly around the front of the car, feeling another of those sallow flashes of jealousy at how easily he moved. Her nose began to run then, thick and warm and sudden. She wiped it on the back of her hand and was not at all surprised to see a bright smear of blood. Then the dam burst and suddenly it was _gushing_, running over her upper lip and trickling into her mouth, slick and loathsome. She wiped it away again and tipped her head back just as Noble dropped into the driver's seat next to her. The car rocked. Cruz winced.

"Well, that was fun," he said cheerfully, throwing the car into gear and putting them back on the street. "I just love the smell of projectile vomit in the morning. Give me a little more warning next time you're gonna do something like that."

"Fuck you," she murmured. It came out high and nasal and absurd; she was trying to pinch the bridge of her nose and stem the flow with her hand at the same time. Blood gushed freely down her hand, her wrist, her forearm. She snorted blood, choked on it, and coughed reflexively, spraying the dashboard with a fine red mist.

Noble made a high, revolted cawing sound. "Jesus, you're disgusting!" he cried, producing a crumpled Kleenex pack from his jacket and thrusting it at her. Then he started rummaging absently through the armrest compartment, which was brimming with audio cassettes. "Like I said, Two-Bags - you're a real pleasure to travel with."

_Two-Bags_.

Oh, that _name_. That hateful goddam street-name.

"You call me that _one more time_," she snapped, clutching a wadded-up ball of Kleenex to her nose, "and I'm gonna put a bullet in your kneecap and leave you screaming. I'm well past caring here, Noble."

"Well, fuck you too," he said promptly, retrieving the cassette he wanted (by feel alone, apparently) and sticking it in the tape deck. "You _do _realize I could have just driven away and left you there, right? I could have just ditched your ass right there, and maybe I should have."

"Maybe you should have," she agreed absently, but she wasn't listening to him anymore. She was squirming listlessly in the seat, trying to adjust to a reasonably comfortable position. Trouble was, there wasn't one. The pain was no longer just confined to her shoulder; it had spread through the rest of her body like fire. Throwing up the way she had - that was what had done it. The _strain_ of it, that terrible feeling of being twisted like a wet rag. Her ribs hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her eyes hurt. _Everything_ hurt. And there was no way to sit or slouch that could make it more bearable. After ten seconds in quiet, miserable frustration she gave up, closed her eyes, and put her head back against the headrest, her chin tilted up. Her nose was still bleeding freely - she was already on her second clump of tissues.

"You know that stupid gun of yours was hanging out of your coat the whole time?" Noble said. His tone was becoming more and more that of a shrewish, nagging wife. "That kid back there saw it. I'm sure he did. He's probably calling the cops right _now_."

On the word _now_ Noble gave the Play button on the tape deck a vicious jab. Nothing happened. He twiddled a few buttons, but the deck still didn't seem to want to work. He cursed under his breath and then added, "Where the hell did you get that thing, anyway? Gangbanger's yard sale?"

"Let it go, Noble," she said wearily, but this time she thought the point was a fair one. Taking the machine-pistol instead of her off-duty gun had been a mistake. Not only had it turned out to be ridiculously cumbersome after all, it occurred to her now that she had never bothered to clean or maintain it. So far as she knew it had never even been fired - at least not in the last four years - and a Tec-9 wasn't exactly the kind of thing you took with you to a police firing range. She supposed it was possible that when the time came to fire it, the damn thing might simply explode in her hand. And then where would she be? A useless meat-rag for a left arm and a stump for the right. The gun was a piece of street-trash and she was unfamiliar with it. So why had she taken it?

Well, that was simple, really - she hadn't been thinking clearly. Just as she wasn't thinking clearly now.

It was, in fact, getting hard to think clearly. And getting harder all the time.

Noble, who was already quite good (_too_ good) at reading her, seemed to pick up on this train of thought. "You're dying on your feet, you know," he said conversationally, eyes never leaving the road. "Do you realize that?"

Cruz looked over at him uneasily but said nothing.

He caught her eye and favored her with something that wasn't quite a smile. "Tell me this, Cruz: what do you think is holding that shoulder of yours together? Hmm? A couple of temporary surgical pins and a prayer, probably. I can see how swollen it is even through your coat. I don't know how you can stand it - you must feel like an overstuffed sausage. And how have you dealt with it so far? You haven't, as far as I've seen. Do you change the dressing? Do you clean the wound? Do you even know how? You're looking at _infection_, Cruz. Or let's all say the big G-word together now, kids - _gangrene_. That is, if you're not there already."

He snorted a laugh. "But I'm getting way ahead of myself, aren't I? Infected or not, you're still not gonna last another week like this. After watching what happened back there, I wouldn't even give you another _day_. And if - _when_ - it does get infected you're gonna be in some seriously deep shit. A squirt of Solarcaine and a band-aid ain't gonna fix you."

Cruz offered nothing in reply to this little monologue. She merely settled her head back against the seat again and ignored him, the picture of cool apathy. But inside she was scared. _Badly_ scared. Noble - to this point her faithful pet writer - was at last starting to throw the tough questions her way, and she realized how utterly ridiculous it was to think she could keep her physical weakness a guarded secret. He could see it - you'd have to be blind not to. He'd seen it right from the beginning.

But he wasn't really telling her anything new - she was already in seriously deep shit and she knew it. Her left arm was a piece of meat that just happened to be connected to her body; there was very little feeling below the elbow now, and the fingers were no longer taking orders at all. If she tried to make a fist they offered only the barest hint of a twitch. If she tried to wiggle them there was nothing.

More frightening, however, was that the hand had actually started to _change color_. Her complexion was bad to start with, of course, but the hand and forearm had gone a sick and deeply unsettling shade of gray. For a while she had tried to tell herself that this was a trick of the light, but she didn't think it was. Her pulse in that arm was weak, barely there, and the hand was cold to the touch. Bad circulation. She had been moving around for almost twenty-four hours now, up on her feet and doing things no-one in her condition was ever supposed to do. God only knew what kind of damage she had been doing to herself - was _still_ doing to herself. _A couple of temporary surgical pins and a prayer_ - that about summed it up, she supposed, and she could imagine those pins coming loose and shifting around, tearing new channels in flesh that should be left to heal in peace. She wished bitterly that she'd paid more attention to what the doctors had told her.

And the bandage was a separate problem altogether. Last night while Noble was relieving himself she had checked the dressing as best she could, and found the thing was now little more than a sweaty, bloody, cheesy-smelling rag. Infection was a distinct possibility. Infection was a distinct _inevitability_, really, and she was becoming more and more certain that if she ever came out of this thing alive, they would probably have to take the arm off at the shoulder.

_Doesn't matter_, she thought defiantly. _Doesn't matter if the goddamned thing turns black and falls off on its own. I'm not stopping. _

"We're gonna have to start facing the cold hard realities here," Noble was saying. "I don't know how this thing with Iggy's gonna go. Here I am, calling him up at seven in the morning and asking if he wants to get together for a beer, and we weren't supposed to meet until next Wednesday. That's a bad risk with somebody like him, Cruz. He's a wildman. A pure wildman. Just as paranoid as Buford, and he'd turn on me just as quick and easy as Willie did. So I repeat: setting up this meeting with Buford could take a few days ... or it could take a month."

"You just keep on doing your job, Noble," she said tightly. "You let me worry about me."

"Oh, believe me, it's not that I _care_ about you. It's just that if you go into septic shock or some damned thing, I'd rather not be anywhere out in the open when it happens. Like what happened just now." He hissed under his breath and added, mostly to himself: "That kid saw the gun. I _know_ he did. Why'd you have to get out of the car, Cruz? Why the fuck couldn't you just lean out the door and let fly?"

"We need to find somewhere to _go_, Noble," she snapped, ignoring him. "How many times have I told you that? We need somewhere to hide."

"_Where_?" he cried, taking his hands off the wheel and waving them wildly. "Where do we go, Cruz? Back to the Bridgeview? You can't go _anywhere_ - don't you _get_ that? Nowhere where there's gonna be people, anyway, and this is fucking _New York_, for Christ's sake! Bad enough you're a wanted felon, you also happen to look like something that crawled out of the _Tales From the Crypt_ special effects department - _that_'s what's really gonna attract attention." He snorted. "I'm just afraid I'm gonna have to do a goddam battlefield amputation. And they look at you funny if you go into a hardware store to buy a hacksaw and five hundred rolls of paper towels."

"I'll be fine."

"No, you won't. And besides which, I don't see _you_ putting any hideout ideas on the table. You're not much help, Two-Bags."

"So just ditch me then," she said. "Take me back to Mercy. Or take me to the Five-Five and leave me on the doorstep. They'd love that, Noble. I was never very popular to start with, and now the whole precinct's gonna be getting bad press because of me. They'd probably lynch me, string me up from the nearest streetlight. I know you'd love to see that. So go ahead. Right now. Drop me right here. I won't try to stop you."

She waited for the car to slow down.

She wasn't surprised when it did not.

"Oh, I think I'll stick around," Noble said. It was almost a sigh, a _resigned_ sigh, his anger suddenly evaporating. Cruz didn't think it had been all that sincere to start with - all of his complaining was mostly just bluster. He muttered another curse at the tape deck, then karate-chopped it with the edge of his hand. The deck emitted a high, mechanical _voop!_ Then _Back in Black_ by AC/DC began to blare from the car's speakers. "For now, anyway. But I want you to tell me one thing before we go any further, Cruz."

"What?"

"I want you to tell me _why. _You haven't really leveled with me yet. Why is this so important to you? Why is it so important to take out this one guy?"

She looked over at him coolly, a tiny fraction of the Anti-Crime Sergeant showing through in her expression. "That subject's off-limits, Aaron," she said, mock-sweet. "I thought I made that clear last night."

"You're in _my_ car," Noble said patiently. "You hijacked _my_ life. Hell, you hijacked my life long before yesterday. You remember the woman I had in my room the day you and your pal Boscorelli came to see me? Kim Zambrano." He made a hissing sound through his teeth that Cruz guessed was meant to indicate just how hot this Kim Zambrano was. "Very nice young lady. Very well put-together, too, I might add. She's a paramedic. With the Fifty-Fifth, come to think of it. Maybe you know her."

"No."

"Well, she broke up with me. We were getting a nice little thing going, but after the shooting she heard I was mixed up in your shit, and so she dumped me. Made quite a scene, too. Right in the Bridgeview lobby."

"That's a damn shame," Cruz said dryly, and put her head back again. If Noble was going to start moaning about his _love life_, then she was most definitely opting out of the conversation. Her nose seemed to have stopped bleeding; at the moment that was more worthy of her interest. Let him ramble. At least he'd let the question about Buford drop.

"_Plus_," Noble plowed on, raising a scholarly finger. "You've given me about twenty opportunities to throw you out on your pretty little keister, and I haven't taken any of them. What happened back there was a _golden_ opportunity to leave you in the dust. So you owe me a simple explanation."

No. No, he wasn't going to let it drop, was he?

"You wouldn't understand," she said in a small, tired voice. She was starting to think she could really _see_ that steel ball bearing, rolling drunkenly from one side of her skull to the other.

"Try me," Noble snorted. "I mean, I understand it's about your kid sister, but Rick Buford didn't even _know_ Letitia, did he? You know what I'm saying, Cruz? The guy had no connection with her whatsoever. So why him? Help me out here."

"Go to hell."

"I'm a writer, remember? I want to know these things. I _have_ to know these things. Now - why Buford?"

"He killed her," she said softly, part of her wondering why she was answering him at all. Mostly to shut him up, she supposed. Also because it was true. "He killed Lettie."

"Oh,_ goddammit, _Cruz!" Noble cried with a sudden, biting anger that startled her. "He didn't kill Lettie! Neither did Geronimo or Chico or Animal or any of those other dipshits she hung around with! You know who killed Lettie? _Lettie_ killed Lettie. I know the official cause of death was listed as _overdose_ - I have my sources. Died in a meth lab while the whole place went up like a torch. You were there, from what I heard. Am I right?"

Cruz opened her mouth to reply ... and then closed it sharply. She had been getting ready to answer him, and was mildly horrified to realize that in a weird way she _wanted _to answer him, to put him right on a few details. Wasn't that something? Noble was the literary equivalent of the tabloid photographer who takes eager snapshots of car accidents, and yet he was a cagey bastard all the same, too good at making you forget yourself.

She had been there when Lettie died, yes. She could tell him that, but she wasn't going to. In its own twisted way what had happened that day had become almost sacred to her. The way Lettie had looked, sitting in the back of the Anti-Crime RMP, still strung out and twitching and making those oddly childlike pinching gestures with her fingers. The way she had looked in the clothes she (Maritza) had given her to wear out of the hospital, swimming in them when they should have been a snug fit. That moment was sacred to her, because in that moment the junkie who had so disgusted (and _frightened_, let's be honest) her in the hospital disappeared. For a few seconds the scrawny freak in the back of the car was gone and it was only her sister sitting there, just her little sister, looking small and beaten and cornered.

She _could_ tell Noble that, but she wasn't going to. She could also tell him that Lettie had apologized to her. If she remembered nothing else, she remembered that, because it was the last coherent thing she ever heard her sister say. _I'm sorry, 'Ritza_. Spoken with a low and almost reflective kind of horror, as if she had just woken up from some long nightmare that nevertheless turned out to be real. Her hair lank and greasy, her neck and hands pockmarked with sores, her face bloodless and waxy, and once she had been so beautiful. All the narc-anon meetings, the stints in rehab, all the tearful promises to clean up, and always back in the same place again, always here, always down in the same hole.

She had apologized.

And then she had bolted from the car and made a run for the house.

She had apologized because she knew she wouldn't be able to help herself.

"_Buford killed her!_" Cruz screamed suddenly in a high, quavering voice. Pain exploded in her shoulder, her head, _everywhere_, but she was, for the moment, beyond it. "_The shit that he makes, the shit that he sells_ _KILLED HER! Do you get that? Don't you _get_ that?_"

Noble nodded calmly. If the outburst had rattled him in any way, it didn't show. "Same old story, in other words," he said. "The slogan of the New Millennium - It's Everybody's Fault But Mine. _'The fast food restaurants made me fat, the tobacco companies gave me cancer, the video games made me shoot up my school.'_ Somebody trips over their shoelace and the next day they sue Nike. Spill hot coffee on yourself and WHAM! See ya in court, Starbucks." He laughed. "You just can't accept the fact that Letitia made her own mistakes, can you? It really _is_ that simple, isn't it? You can't just turn around and say she fucked up her own life, oh well, too bad, that's the way the cards fell."

"Do you want to know how she died?" Cruz spat. "Do you want to know _exactly_ how she died for your fucking book? Because I'll tell you - she went into that meth lab and she found herself a nice little drift of that shit and she stuck her face right down in it and she just _inhaled_. Because that was all she knew, Noble, that was all she fucking kne-"

Her throat closed suddenly, cutting the last word neatly in half. Tears cut fresh tracks through the thin grease of sweat and rainwater on her face. She had lived that day over and over again in her mind, awake and asleep, she had memorized every detail though it had all played out like a disjointed fever-dream at the time. First the chance-meeting with Lettie in the hospital. Then a blundering, half-blind rampage across the neighborhood looking for the dealer responsible for selling her the meth that had put her there. And then the meth lab itself. Kneeling in the basement, the house creaking ominously as the fire ate it away, nose and mouth and lungs burning with the fumes, Lettie breathing rapid and shallow in her arms, Bosco stumbling around the basement yelling into his radio, _10-13, 10-13,_ over and over, officers need assistance, the lab worker going into labor, something about barrels of ammonia in the storage room. A lot going on all at once, to be sure.

To Maritza Cruz it had all been distant, disconnected, unimportant, happening to somebody else. There was only Lettie. The house was burning down around them and the air was turning to poison and there were enough chemicals in that storage room to put them all on the fucking moon, and all Maritza could think about was walking Lettie home from school when they were kids. That was the thought that she kept coming back to, the one random memory she plucked out of the twenty-one years of Lettie's life. Walking her home from school. How in the winter she always had to lift Lettie up so she could slap down the icicles that formed along the top of the schoolyard fence. Just one of those stupid, pointless things little kids get it into their heads to do. And the girl would never be satisfied with just a few, oh no - it had to be _every single one of them_. Lettie doing her civic duty, removing those unsightly icicles, and Maritza remembered how much it used to get on her nerves, because it was so tiresome and if they didn't get home before four-thirty Papa would yell at them.

And then Lettie died ... and it was so _easy_. It was so _right_, so right that after all the pain and humiliation and the indignities she had suffered she could just slip away in her sister's arms. Things like that didn't happen in the real world, and Maritza had been around death in her career enough to know that it was rarely a quick and clean affair, but here they were all the same. Lettie took one of those uneven, shallow little breaths, let it out, and then just didn't take another one. Maritza felt it happen, she felt it and yet she felt nothing, just a blunt and stupid kind of emptiness. Twenty-one years had just ended in one moment of absolute clarity, and Maritza was numb.

She had been planning on taking Lettie home. That was how it was supposed to go. Maritza would put away the bad guys and then take Lettie home, give her a hot meal, a place to shower, a place to sleep. And then they would see if they could start sorting through things again, and maybe this time Lettie would finally get some real help. And it would be for keeps this time. This time it would _stick_. All narc-anon meetings would be attended. All twelve steps of the program would be taken. All promises would be kept. All things would work out in the end. Amen. Why not? Why couldn't that have worked, why couldn't it have ended that way? If Lettie could die painlessly while Maritza held her and rocked her and talked to her, then why couldn't it have ended like that?

It hadn't, though, and instead of taking Lettie home Maritza had gone back to her apartment alone, where she lit candles and dug up a bunch of old photographs for lack of anything else to do. Here - a picture of her and Lettie on the ski trip. Here - Lettie in her First Communion dress. Here - a fourteen-year-old Maritza reading Dr. Seuss to a five-year-old Lettie on Maritza's bed, the two of them curled up in the blankets. Here - Lettie proudly showing off a lost baby-tooth. All the proper happy-family cliches. Cruz sat alone in her apartment, her Christmas lights still up even though it was February, the candles burning, flipping halfheartedly through her pictures. She remembered she had showered three times to try to get the stink - real or imagined - of the chemicals off her skin. She would shower and then she would return to the photos, back and forth like that. Knowing that she would eventually have to go to bed and go to sleep and meet up with whatever dreams awaited her there. And when Bosco came over to check on her she had taken him to bed with her, not really because she wanted to and not really because he saved her life that day but because she _needed_ to, she needed someone, to be close to someone. To not be alone. And maybe having that would keep the dreams away.

It hadn't.

"You don't know," Cruz whispered hoarsely. "You don't know how hard she tried, Noble ... she tried so hard, she hated it and she wanted to get clean ..."

_Oh, why are you doing this?_ _Why have you let him draw you into this? Why are you justifying yourself to this piece of shit?_

The answer came back immediately, and it came back hard: _He has no RIGHT! No RIGHT! How dare he question me? How dare this son of a bitch, this _dope addict_ son of a bitch question me?_

She had to stop, though, she had to calm down. She was breathing very hard now, and though she was still drenched from the rain and she was still cold right through to her bones, she could still feel the perspiration rolling down her cheeks. The ball bearing in her skull rolled sickeningly. Back and forth, back and forth. _Thunk, thunk_.

But her mouth just kept going.

"She tried so hard to beat it," she repeated, crying openly now and not caring. "And those bastards were always there, they were always waiting to pull her right back in."

"So it _was_ everybody's fault but hers," Noble said complacently, shaking his head. "You're a piece of work, Cruz. You surely are a piece of work. You're a _book_, you know that? I could probably get a thousand pages out of you alone."

Cruz opened her mouth to reply.

Then her breath caught as something in her mind -

(_I'm a writer, remember? I want to know these things._ _I _have_ to know these things)_

clicked neatly into place.

That was it. Oh, that was _it_, right there, wasn't it? He was a cagey bastard, she'd thought that only a _moment_ ago - cagey and able to push emotional buttons with almost as much skill as any cop worth his or her salt, and that had been it all along, the reason he had been so into this from the beginning. He _had_ her. He had her under his thumb, _exactly_ the same way she had had him only a week ago, and he could do whatever he pleased with her. She wasn't wearing the badge around her neck anymore, so Mr. Noble was holding all the cards. Only he didn't want to overpower her and take the crystal meth she was carrying. No, he wanted to run her through a few hoops, find out what made her tick - front-line research into the mind of an obsessed cop on a suicide mission.

_Right on_, that other interior voice - the Anti-Crime Sergeant - agreed grimly. _Richard Buford isn't the Great Writer's Adventure, honey - _you_ are. _

If that were true, then this interview was now officially terminated.

She looked thoughtfully down at the clump of bloody tissues that she had only just realized she was still clutching. Her nose had stopped bleeding several minutes ago, and she supposed she should be thankful that the shameful outburst Noble had provoked hadn't started it up again.

Her forearm and hand were crusted with blood, though. She cleaned herself up as best she could, then threw the wad of Kleenex into the back seat, where it added to the overall jumble of blankets and books and empty pop cans. If Noble noticed this little act of blatant littering, he gave no sign. His eyes were on the road again, and it seemed he was no longer interested in her, or in pressing his case for personal responsibility. She hoped it stayed that way. He was supposed to meet Iggy before noon, at a Disciples hangout across the city. It was now almost ten-fifty, and the traffic and the endless rain made the going slow. Let him concentrate on that.

For her part, Cruz discovered that she was extremely thirsty. Allowing yourself to be suckered into throwing a screaming, crying tantrum tended to do that to you. Her bottle of water was tucked into one of the drink holders under the dash, and it still looked to have a few mouthfuls left in it.

Of course, the sleazy, manipulating _cabron_ next to her had been the one who'd bought it for her. She supposed he got off on seeing how badly she needed something he'd provided for her out of his own pocket.

Thirst, however, took priority over pride.

Cruz leaned forward and reached for the bottle.

And found she couldn't do it. The pain was too bad. But that wasn't even the main thing - it was as much the _fear_ of pain that kept her from moving. It was like a very old and very dangerous dog - you walked lightly around it, lest you wake it up and have it take a swatch out of your hide.

_I'm gonna have to get him to do it, _she thought wretchedly._ God help me, I'm gonna have to ask him to get it for me. _

No. Absolutely, unequivocally _no_. She leaned forward again, slowly this time, slow enough to look ridiculous, a woman doing her little impression of some slow-moving animal - _hey kids, this is how a three-toed sloth looks_. Her hand was shaking badly now, and she missed twice before her fingers finally closed around the neck of the plastic bottle.

She became aware that Noble was watching this little operation from the corner of his eye. And he wasn't bothering to hide the fact that he was getting a big kick out of it.

"Oh yeah," he chuckled softly. "I can see you're _real_ tough, Cruz. I'm sitting here next to a big ol' action hero."

"I'm not doing this," she said quietly, sitting back and taking a sip from her hard-earned bottle. "I'm not giving you any more."

She half-expected him to ask her what she meant by that, play it innocent, but he didn't. "You told me last night that I could - and I quote - 'put whatever spin on you I wanted.' Well, I need to know more about you. There's a good chance I'll be writing your obituary." He laughed. "So to speak."

"You have your goddam notebook on me, right? Stick with that and leave me alone."

"The cops have it. You know that. Besides, it needed some padding. So pad away."

"Fuck. You. Noble," she snapped, biting off each word.

He nodded soberly at this, as if he expected no less from her - it was just mouthy ol' Maritza Cruz, after all - and was perfectly willing to take it in stride.

Then, with deliberate drama, he leaned forward and cranked up the tape-deck's volume.

_Back in Black_ became a screaming din.

Cruz bucked in her seat like a fish. Her water bottle slipped from her hand and rolled under the seat, spilling what little was left in it as it went. The ball bearing in her head did not just _roll_ now; it _lurched_, hammering at her temples, and it did feel like a truly physical thing, ready to pound its way through her skull and drop right into Noble's lap. The drone behind it - that steady beehive drone - swelled to a high, keening howl. The interior of the car swayed and tilted crazily. Her stomach clenched and then folded over on itself.

She squeezed her eyes shut and put her shaking hand to her temple, almost whimpering: "_Please_ ..."

"If you won't talk to me, then I guess it's gotta be AC/DC," Noble shouted over the music. "I can't abide crushing, uncomfortable silences. I need something in the air. I should also warn you that I've been known to sing along. I'm told I do a pretty mean Brian Johnson."

"What do you want from me?" Cruz moaned, head reeling. "_What_?"

There was a pause. Then, mercifully, the volume of the song went down.

"Well, let's start small," she heard him say. His voice seemed to come from very far off. "Tell me where your people are from."

Cruz opened her eyes and looked at him mistrustfully. The question was so bizarre and so far out of left-field that for a moment she believed something in her brain had shorted out, some neural misfire brought on by the trauma she was being subjected to. "What ...? My what ...? My _people_?"

Noble nodded. "You know - your family. Your _roots_. What part of Latin America does Family Cruz hail from?"

"My mother was Puerto Rican," she said cautiously, wondering what new horror this could be leading into. "My father's family was from Colombia."

"Ah, Colombia!" Noble exclaimed grandly, stirring up another small typhoon in her head and making her wince. "Beautiful country! So long as you know the right places to go, anyway."

"Wouldn't know," she said faintly. "Never been there."

"How many people in your family? You, your mother, your father, Lettie. Anybody else? No other siblings?"

"No."

"None? No brothers? No other sisters?"

"There were twenty-five of us. All crammed into the same one-bedroom apartment. Typical Latino family. That what you want to hear?"

Noble reached menacingly for the volume knob.

Cruz saw it and cringed miserably. "All right!" she cried, and a mostly subconscious part of her marveled at how pathetic she had become. Jump through those hoops, Maritza. Dance on those strings. "_All right_, goddammit! It was just me and Lettie and my father. All right?"

"And you were all very close?"

"Yes! Yes, now please just - "

"I know you were close with Letitia," Noble said calmly. "Obviously you were. What about dad? Was he an okay sort of guy? There was never any abuse, was there? Verbal? Physical? Sexual? Did he ever hurt Lettie? Is that why you were so protective of her?"

"Oh, you son of a _bitch_, Noble ..."

Noble's hand darted forward with an alarming, oily speed and gave the volume knob on the tape deck a vicious twist to the right. Cruz wailed and tried to cover her ears, but with only one hand available for the job she didn't do so well. _Back in Black_ had ended and now Brian Johnson was singing the chorus to _Highway to Hell_ in his rusty chainsaw voice. Cruz wondered in a distracted, muddy sort of way if this _was_ hell, and immediately decided that it was. Yokas had shot straight and true after all. That was it. Had to be it. Yokas had shot straight and true, the dumdum bullet had blown her heart out and this was hell, and guess what - it was not her father's gigantic barbecue pit after all. It was something more terrible in its strangeness, a kind of rolling talkshow where the punishment for not answering a question was an earsplitting dose of classic metal. Satan's music itself.

It was bone-rattlingly loud. And he wasn't turning it down this time.

_He's gonna kill me_. _He's gonna kill me oh God he's gonna kill me he's gonna kill me with AC/DC after all I've been through it's gonna be death by heavy metal - _

Abruptly, the music died away to a murmur. Cruz slumped back in her seat. She was breathing in quick, shallow gasps - she had been screaming the whole time.

"Name-calling is uncalled for," Noble said primly, and for the first time Cruz wondered if he might actually be high. Surely he _must_ be high. He was a coward, he'd always been a coward, but right now he was acting like he was invincible, like he wasn't sitting next to a woman with a gun, a woman who had virtually no reason to live and absolutely nothing to lose. This wasn't the Noble she remembered from the last two weeks at all. This was more like being in a car with ... well, it was more like being in a car with Detective Schaeffer. Noble had suddenly grown balls, and for that he must have had some kind of pharmaceutical help.

The trouble was, she hadn't seen him take a snort even once since she'd hooked up with him. He'd gone to the bathroom twice, and he'd left her alone to make his call to Iggy ... but he'd left his drugs in the car on all of those occasions. Noble claimed to have had a good toot last night before leaving the Bridgeview, and wanted to save the stuff she'd given him - the _top-notch_ stuff she'd given him - for later. She supposed he could still have snuck some in somewhere, but she didn't think he had.

So there was only one other conclusion - underneath it all, Aaron Noble was not at all the man she'd thought he was. She'd misread him. Misjudged him.

_You got sloppy_, her father's voice intoned sadly_. Again._

"Name-calling is uncalled for," Noble repeated. "It's not nice, and for your future reference I'm declaring it against the rules of this interview. It was just a question, Cruz. No need to get all bent out of shape over a little question. So your father never abused you two gals, okay. But he must've been strict. You grew up Catholic, right? Who was your priest, again? Estrada, wasn't it? Like the actor. Eric Estrada." Noble paused thoughtfully and said, mostly to himself, "Or is Eric Estrada a singer? I can never remember."

"How did you know all that?" Cruz said breathlessly.

"From Lettie." Noble looked over at her with a wide-eyed innocence that was completely bogus. "Oh, that's right - I interviewed her. Didn't I mention that?"

Cruz looked back at him, thunderstruck. "No," she said hoarsely.

"Oh yeah. All that stuff I wrote about her in my notebook? Most of that came straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Not easy to get anything _straight _out of her, mind you. A suspicious little girl, was your sister. Thought I was a cop. At least until I gave her a little something to get her to open up to me."

Cruz went rigid. The ball bearing seemed to suddenly drop out of her skull and land heavily in the pit of her stomach. "You _what_?" she rasped.

"I said I had to give her something to get her to talk to me," Noble said coolly. "She was a bit rude until she had a reward dangling in front of her. Tell me, Cruz, was she _always_ that surly, or did she only get that way when she hit her terrible teens?"

"You gave her drugs," Cruz breathed. Her tone was dreamy, almost reflective. She could feel that familiar, tenebrous rage descending over her mind like curtain, flipping little mental switches as it went, shutting out rational thought. It also erased most of her pain and discomfort in a warm wash of adrenaline, and that made her all the more willing to surrender to it. Her right hand crept down to her side where the Tec-9 rested against her hip, almost of its own volition. "You son of a bitch. Oh, you _filthy_ son of a bitch."

"Oh, come on now, Cruz. What do you think you're doing with me? Feeding my own little problem for your own ends, that's what. I _have_ a problem - I admit that. Lettie had a problem, too, and she accepted me when she saw that we both had the same monkey riding our backs. I already told your pal Bosco that I have to become part of the world I'm writing about for my books to work properly. Lettie and I got nicely toasted together and had a grand old chat. About you, mostly."

"I'm going to kill you, Noble," Cruz said thickly. Her voice was shaking, enough so that the words were barely intelligible. "Right now."

Noble ignored her and kept driving along placidly.

Under her coat, her hand kneaded the dimpled polymer grip of the Tec-9.

But she did nothing.

And he _knew_ she would do nothing. He knew he could keep this up, keep tormenting her, get a new rise out of her every minute, and all because she was not quite ready to give up on Rick Buford just yet. Noble had _her_ addiction pegged.

"It was a long time ago, Cruz," he sighed. "Year and a half, at least. And I'll tell you again - nobody put a gun to Lettie's head. She was nineteen, and she did it all by her very own self. Besides, don't you want to know what she had to say?"

Cruz made no reply. Her hand had left her coat; the anger was already fading, mostly because she simply didn't have the energy to maintain it. She was beaten. She was as good as handcuffed. Her body wasn't the only thing that was sick and weak, it seemed - the deterioration went right through her, body, mind and spirit.

_Old girl just ain't what she used to be_, the Anti-Crime Sergeant who lived in her crumbling mind said sadly.

"I'll take your silence as a yes," Noble said. "Let's see, what did Lettie say ... well, she told me about your lives growing up. Some of it, anyway. How your dad was really into the whole strict Catholic values and discipline thing. How he used to use his belt on you - "

"He _never_!" Cruz shouted, rising to him again. "I mean ... I mean he _did_, he did use the belt, but only once or twice!" She licked her lips feverishly, aware of how lame that sounded. How _daffy_. "In fifteen years, he used it maybe once on me and twice on Lettie! And never hard enough to leave a mark! Never!"

" - but mostly she told me about you," Noble rolled on, ignoring her. Then he glanced wryly at her, a small, unpleasant smile playing on his lips. "Jesus, Cruz, that kid hated you like poison, did you know that? Like _poison_. I don't know what you think you had with her, but Lettie hated your fucking guts. Said you were a traitor, that you sold out to the Man and started locking up everybody in your 'hood just to make yourself feel bigger and better. Said you did it all out of spite, and really you were just an insecure, loudmouthed bitch who liked to think she knew what was best for everybody else."

Cruz smiled thinly. Now this, this was _obvious_ bait. Bait to get _another_ rise out of her. But she wasn't going to take it this time, and he could crank up the rock concert all he wanted. He was trying to torment her, get a few good licks in, but this new tactic was a pretty amateurish way to go about it.

"You're not telling me a goddamn thing I don't already know, Noble," she said. "Lettie was a child. In her mind she was _always_ a child. And a child never knows what's best for her, does she? A child lashes out at the people who try to protect her. A child doesn't understand that it's all for her own good. Does she, Noble?"

He shrugged. "I'm not trying to start a fight with you, Cruz. I'm only telling you what she told me. And in a way I have to agree. I mean, _did_ you really think you were helping your 'hood? Exactly what do you think the War on Drugs is really all about, anyway? It's not about winning, because it can never be won. It's not about _helping_ people, because you don't help people by stacking them up in prisons. I'll tell you what it's about - it's about pure politics. It's about maintaining the status quo. It's about sweeping the poor out of the streets and out of the way. It's about getting rid of the minorities - it's fucking _racist_, in other words." He shrugged. "But why waste the old Bleeding-Heart Liberal sermon on you, right? You've probably heard it all before."

"Heard it," she said. "Ignored it."

Noble laughed. "That's about what I figured. But tell me this - how many people did you arrest for drug possession in a week? Just _possession_. Hmm? Five? Ten? Twenty? Shake 'em down and find a bit of pot or meth or crack and send them off to jail. You think _that's_ the way to help people? Or here's one - how many people did you _plant_ drugs on so you could get them on a possession charge? How many did you _threaten_ to plant drugs on to get them under your thumb?"

"I did good, Noble," she said. "You'll never make me say otherwise. _Never_. I did good. I did so much good. I go out there, I try to help my community, and what happens? They want to lock _me_ up for it. _That's_ your story, Noble. You put that in your goddamn book."

"You did good? You did good for your _community_? You and your crew had that community _terrorized_, Cruz!"

"Correction: we had the _skells_ terrorized."

"You really think that, don't you?" he said, shaking his head. "Even now, you really believe that. Okay, let's take it up a notch - new line of questioning. Tell me: how many people have you killed in the line?"

"No."

Noble clapped a dramatic hand over his heart. "No?" he cried, voice rising in mock-horror. "_No_? Not a wise answer, Cruz. If AC/DC isn't loud enough for you, I also have a more modern selection of audio medicine. Nine Inch Nails, maybe. Makes AC/DC sound like a boys' choir. Now - how many?"

"Seven."

Noble whistled. "Wow. Not that I'm surprised - always did have you figured for a killing machine. So who's Leo Gaines and how does _he_ factor in?"

Cruz jerked as if stung, eyes widening.

_Leo Gaines. _

Oh, now, she could _not_ have heard that right. Her brain really _was_ shorting out and playing evil little tricks on her, because she did _not_ just hear Noble utter that name. The name of one of the two men she had killed ... killed in what she knew most people would call _cold blood_. One of the men she had _executed_.

An execution that _no-one could possibly know about_.

_How _does_ he know?_ she thought, her mind-voice high and panicky. _How does he know all of this? How can he? How can he know so fucking _much

"You talked in your sleep last night, you know," Noble said, sensing her shock and answering the unspoken question. "Didn't understand most of it, but I caught some pretty lucid bits here and there. Mostly the Lettie-related stuff - you're really obsessed with that little twerp, aren't you? Something about a rosary. _'You keep it, you take it, it's yours. Give it to your kids.'_ That's what you said. Something you gave to her as a gift, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah," Cruz said, but she was barely paying attention - he had lost her at _you talked in your sleep_. She had absolutely no memory of sleeping. Absolutely _none_. She _did_ remember Noble sleeping (and he snored like a buzzsaw) and she remembered telling herself that she couldn't risk sleeping even while he was out, because he couldn't be trusted, he was dangerous -

"Something else about icicles," Noble broke in. "A few names here and there. I jotted them down and memorized them. Let's see ... I heard Johnny ... Ramon ... Claudia ... Bosco ... At one point you said '_fuckin' heart, fuckin' heart, I'm gonna kill him_' three or four times in a row. What's that mean? Did somebody break your poor little fuckin' heart, Cruz?"

"Hart," she said in a very small voice. She felt as if she might be getting ready to be sick again. "Hart spelled H-A-R-T." She paused, and then added, "And yeah, I'd like to kill him."

"But you said you really _did_ kill Leo Gaines. You said something like, '_yeah, I shot Leo Gaines._' Who was he? Your first kill?"

Cruz swallowed hard. "No," she said slowly. "No, he wasn't my first kill."

"So who was he?"

"That," she said grimly, "is a _long_ story, Noble."

He gestured at the street in front of them. "We've got a ways to go yet, my dear girl. Plenty of time, too. Lots of time for bonding over long stories. Start talking. Start talking or you-know-what happens."

"I could kill you!" she bit out suddenly, with more strength than she would have imagined possible. "Don't you see that? I could kill us both, right_ now_!"

"But you won't," he said calmly. "So start talking. I've got a hunch this one's gonna be good."

"You _are_ a son of a bitch, Noble," she said through the middle of a wild, humorless chuckle. "A petty limp-dicked son of a bitch. You know that?"

"The potty-mouth insults are getting old, Cruz. Kindergarten was a long time ago, so stop embarrassing yourself and start talking. Tell me all about this Leo Gaines."

"He was a C.I.," she said wearily. "About two years ago." She paused. There was an audible click as she swallowed another lump in her throat. She had done a lot of thinking about Gaines, particularly over the last forty-eight hours or so, but talking about him out loud could still make her uneasy. "Skinny guy. About six-five. Looked like some kind of walking public service announcement against inbreeding. The few teeth he still had were all green and crooked, and the _breath_ on that guy ..." She laughed. "_Dios Mio_ ... that fucking dog-breath of his ..."

"Is that why you shot him?" Noble muttered under his breath.

"He was useful enough," she continued, ignoring him, and she discovered something strange - uncomfortable as it was to talk about this, there was something in her mind that was cycling up, running faster and faster, seizing on the story of Leonard Mitchell Gaines. Because she _could_ tell Noble this story. This _particular_ story. There was no Lettie in it.

_You weren't gonna give anything else up to him, though. You weren't gonna put on any more shows for him. _

True, but anything she could keep him occupied with - anything that wouldn't roll back around to her sister - was perfectly fine with her.

"He was in it for the thrill, I think," she went on. "He liked playing both sides. Kind of like you." She smiled. "He could never make it, you know. He was a loser. Low in the pecking order and always would be. But he thought he had brains. Thought he could get to the top. And that, that's what screwed him."

She paused, shooting a covert glance at Noble out of one half-lidded eye.

He made a hurrying gesture with his hand. "Keep going."

She had him hooked, all right. Oh _yeah_. Storytime, chill'un. Gather 'round and Mother Maritza will spin you a yarn.

Cruz took another breath and plunged on. It was easy, she was discovering - she could just close her eyes and let her voice settle into a murmuring drone, and there was another advantage, as well: when she concentrated on talking, it kept the pain at bay. A _little_ bit, anyway. "He witnessed a shooting. Pure bad luck. He was with me and my partner one night, we were taking him home and then ... then we hear an alarm, people screaming, and we see this guy come running out of a convenience store with a gun. We chased him in the RMP with Gaines still in the back seat. We cornered the perp, and North - he was my partner at the time - "

"Glenn North," Noble said instantly. "Big, hatchet-faced guy. Long-time veteran and one of your Anti-Crime gorillas. I've heard of him."

"North shot the guy. The robber, I mean. Thing was, the guy was trying to surrender. Had his hands up. North, though ... North shot him anyway. This guy, this robber, he'd killed the clerk in the store. An old man. An old man who cooperated, never made any trouble -"

"And so North decided to be judge, jury and executioner," Noble finished disgustedly. "Typical."

Cruz paid no attention to this. Noble wanted her to tell him stories and he was finally getting it, uncut and with no commercial breaks. Let him stuff his moralizing up his ass. "Gaines saw the whole thing. And what does he do? He starts running his mouth, trying to use it as leverage. Over _us_."

Noble shook his head. "Oh. Oh, man. I see where this is going. Gaines saw North shoot a guy in cold blood. So you did the same thing to Gaines."

Cruz hesitated. Noble had just guessed the rest of the story right on ... and yet at the same time he hadn't. It hadn't gone down like that. At least, not _exactly_ like that. It was true that she had taken Gaines to an abandoned lot, where she had threatened him with her little unregistered .25 automatic. But she had never gone out there _intending_ to kill him. It had been a bluff. One that she had fully expected to work.

But it _hadn't_ worked. Gaines wouldn't take the hint. He was too proud, too full of himself to be properly scared. He thought he was smart, thought he could merrily roll right over everybody in his path, including the cops who were using him as an informant. So standing in that vacant lot in the middle of the night, they had ended up stuck in a stalemate - Gaines wouldn't back down and neither would she. Again, it was a case of her making a catastrophic error in character judgement. She had always been so proud of how easily and quickly she could pin down a man's (or a woman's) personality ... and yet Gaines had been another in a long line of examples of how those instincts had failed her.

She could have let him go. She _should_ have let him go and then found some other way to deal with him. It would have been easy to threaten him right back - she could spread the word on the street that he was a snitch and see how long it took for him to turn up in a landfill. She could even stand back and call _his_ bluff - after all, the police probably wouldn't listen to a gangly, swaggering hillbilly with a cocaine habit and a list of priors that went back almost to his childhood. Gaines was the only civilian witness to the shooting. The guy North had killed had raised his hands in surrender, true, but he'd also had a gun in his jacket. There was no way to prove it wasn't self-defense. It would be Leo Gaines' word against theirs.

But Gaines had the misfortune to pull his shit at a very bad time in Cruz's life. By then the situation with Lettie was bad and moving rapidly towards worse (Lettie _was_ in this story after all, it seemed) - Maritza had caught her hooking only a week before, and for the third time ... after many tearful promises that she'd never, _ever_ sell her body on the streets again, Maritza had her solemn word on their mother and father's _souls_. A month before _that_, Lettie had gotten the shit kicked out of her by about six frat boys after they hired her to do a gang-bang for an amateur porn video. The price was sixty dollars. The title of this charming piece of filmmaking was _Crack Whores of New York, Vol. 2_. Lettie had come out of it with three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. And no money. They never paid her. Not surprisingly, that was what had pissed Lettie off the most. Broken ribs or not, dislocated shoulder or not, she'd been all locked and loaded to go back there and cut 'em all. _Gonna go back and cut their fuckin' balls off_, that was how she'd put it, her accent thickening to the point where it descended into parody, like a racist Hollywood burlesque of a tough Latina streetwalker ... even though both she and Maritza had been raised to speak better.

But nothing ever came of it. No cutting of balls or of anything else. And no charges, either, no jail time for any of them, not even the beefy jagoff who had delivered the kick that broke Lettie's ribs. Cruz and her team had caught up with the aspiring filmmakers at the apartment of the movie's director and mastermind, a kid named Robbie Holland. She broke a beer bottle and, while North held him down, she showed Holland a piece of jagged glass and told him she was going to scoop out his eyes. When she lightly ran the edge of the shard across his cheek, he promptly shit his pants. And that was the only satisfaction she ever got - despite the depraved violence of the movie, Lettie was eighteen, she had gone into it voluntarily, and the little college boys all had powerful daddies with powerful lawyers. They were, after all, America's Future. And what was Lettie?

Why, merely a Crack Whore of New York.

And while all of that was bad enough, Cruz had _also_ just come through the mess that J.D. Hart's treachery had sparked; the investigation and the retribution that followed, the chaotic whirlwind of reprimands, the transfers and suspensions, and of course Johnny Hoyle's suicide and subsequent funeral. Cruz herself had come out of it more or less unscathed, but she'd come out more pissed at the system than ever and feeling mean as hell.

Gaines had known about the money scandal, and he made the very lethal mistake of taunting her with it. If she thought the trouble Hart caused over stolen money was bad, Gaines said, what did she think would happen when the cops heard about North's little mishap? And if the cops wouldn't listen, Gaines promised to _make_ them listen. He'd go to the press, he'd call the ACLU, he'd raise the fucking _roof_. And then the whole thing might start all over again. Only this time it would be _murder_, not money. Would North eat the barrel of his nine-millimeter the way Johnny had? Why, he probably would.

And the worst of it was, Cruz could see how it just might happen. She didn't really think anything could come of it in the long run, but to have to endure _another_ investigation so soon after the other one ... that alone would be very bad. There was too much negative attention focused on her already, and she was getting a reputation. A bad one. It began to dawn on her that this scrawny little prick might really be able to create a serious problem. And even if he couldn't, how could he _threaten_ her like this? It was unthinkable - Gaines's life was in her hands in every conceivable way. She could do anything to him. _Anything_. Put him in the joint or put him in the ground. But she had protected him. She had even rewarded him by feeding his coke habit on the sly. And this was what she got for it.

She remembered how the rage had come on her the way it always did, like a blanket drifting over her mind, pulling those little mental shutters closed as it went, reducing thought to colors and images and undiluted emotion. She thought of Johnny Hoyle, sitting on his couch with half his head gone and his brains spread across the wall behind him. He'd turned his stereo up to full blast to cover the shot, and that was how they'd found him - a neighbor had complained about the deafening sound of Lenny Kravitz's _Are You Gonna Go My Way_ playing on Repeat. She thought of Lettie, beaten and molested and sexually humiliated for the amusement of a bunch of all-American white college boys and how nothing, _nothing_ ever came of it.

And she thought of Leonard Mitchell Gaines himself. After everything else, Gaines comes along and starts making his demands, his threats, his taunts. Because he knows how the world works, and he knows _she_ knows. They both know the system. The system that protects the worst of society and pisses on the good. She knows.

Gaines pushed her into it. That was the bottom line. He pushed her, he threatened her, he taunted her, and when she finally lost control it was just like that day in June all those years ago, when she punched out Cameron Wilcox for making Lettie cry. Gaines started to walk away from her and so she raised her illegal gun (bluff or no bluff, it was still _loaded_) and shot him in the back of the head. Gaines is there ... and then he isn't. As easy as that. He'd left her with no choice.

Cruz told Aaron Noble all of this, omitting nothing. And somehow, though she'd vowed not to stray from the subject of Gaines, the whole story of Johnny Hoyle made it in there as well; how J.D. Hart (_fuckin' Hart_, Noble claimed she had said in her sleep, and she believed him) had screwed them all over and walked away clean. She told him about the porno movie Lettie had gotten herself into with that Holland asshole, and how Holland had shit in his pants when she held the glass shard in front of his eye. She even told him the whole story of Cam, Lettie and her goldfish and that punch, that serious right cross that could perhaps be said to have started it all; the punch heard 'round the world.

She told him _everything_.

And when she'd finished, all Noble could offer was, "Christ," in a small, breathy voice. Then, after a moment, in the same tone: "Glad to get all that off your chest, are you?"

"It was what you wanted, right?" she said with a lopsided grin. Her tone was sweet, but there was an underlying tremor that might have been anger, or fear, or shock that it all could have fallen out of her so easily, or all three. She was cold all through her and shivering badly, but it was no longer just because of her worsening physical state. "You wanted it, and you got it. You _raped_ it all out of me. So - was it good for you, Noble? Did it get you off?"

"Yeah," he said hollowly. "Yeah, whatever, but ... but that Gaines guy, that's what I'm stuck on ... you really just lost it and blew him away. You really did."

Cruz was mildly amused to note that this was not phrased as a question. "You're sitting next to a cold-blooded killer, Noble," she said grimly. "Is that starting to sink in yet?"

"So ... so how come they never caught you? I mean after you killed him. What did you do with the body? "

"Dumped it. Rolled it into the river. Probably could have just left him right where he was, but dumping him seemed smarter."

"And nobody ever thought to make the connection?"

She offered a weak, dismissive little wave with her right hand. "Assumed to be a standard case of gangland retribution. He had a lot of enemies. And no family."

"Nobody to make waves and demand answers."

"Right."

Noble raked a hand back through his hair and sighed. "_Whoo_-boy. I repeat what I said earlier - you are an entire book in and of yourself, Cruz."

She smiled faintly. "Maybe I am."

"Maybe after I'm done with Iggy we ought to make a run by your church. See if Padre Estrada's home. I don't know how seriously you still take your Catholicism, but you should definitely be thinking about getting right with your God."

"Maybe I should."

"And you did it all for _her_, didn't you?" he said, shaking his head. He seemed to be talking almost to himself now. "All for Lettie. From punching some kid out because he was mean to her, on up to threatening to cut some guy's eyes out for her, on up to _killing_ for her. Everything was always for _Lettie_."

Cruz thought of the _second_ execution, the one Noble didn't seem to know about - apparently she hadn't done any sleeptalking about Michael Alvarez. That one had been different. That one had been ... _worse_, and it had grown directly out of the first - if she hadn't killed Gaines, she never would have shot Alvarez. And Lettie ... Lettie _had_ factored into Alvarez's death as well, hadn't she? Oh yes - and in a much bigger way, too. Lettie factored into _everything_. Noble was right, but again he really wasn't telling her anything new: Lettie was the hub from which every other spoke of her life seemed to have grown. The girl had driven almost everything she'd ever done.

And even now, with Letitia Cruz three months under the ground and rotting, it was still going on.

Next to her, Noble uttered what sounded like a rueful laugh. "I'm starting to believe you can do it."

"Do what?"

"Kill Rick Buford. I think you've really got a shot, Cruz. Even if he's got his best crew with him - which he will - and even if they're armed to the fucking teeth - which they will be - I'm starting to think you can do it. You're an obsessive, Cruz, and you've done what all obsessives do - you've taken one core idea and built a fortress of sweet little lies around it. Buford killed Lettie, because _she_ was a meth addict and _he's_ a top dog in the meth trade. Kill him and everything is brought into balance, the universe rights itself, and everybody lives happily ever after. With that kind of thought process, it's no wonder you think you're the fucking Terminator. And you know what the funniest part is?"

"Tell me. Please."

"The funniest part is how much Letitia actually resented you. How much she _hated_ you. You wanna know something else she told me when we talked? She said that you spent your whole life trying to tell her how to live _her_ life, and then when she really needed you, you weren't there for her."

Cruz choked out a scornful laugh. "Nice try, Noble. She never would have said anything like that. She was too convinced she didn't need me. She thought she was indestructible."

He shrugged. "She _did_ say it, though. She gave me some jumbled-up story about a ski trip - you took her skiing, and everything was great. Something about a play-fight on the slopes, and after you even had some guy take your picture with her - she told me she liked that. Said it felt like you respected her again. And then afterwards you just kind of _stopped_. She didn't hear from you anymore. Guess you got tired of picking her up and cleaning her off, huh?"

Cruz, though, was not hearing him anymore.

He knew about the trip.

Oh, Jesus, he _knew about the trip_.

_Because I talked about it, _she thought wildly._ I must have talked about it in my sleep, that sleep I don't even remember taking. More sleep-talk, and he just picked it out like he picked out Gaines._

But the photograph. The _photograph_ ... and the play-fight on the slopes ... and the fact that she _had_ started to tune Lettie out after the ski trip ... there was just too much detail there. Too much detail for him to have gotten it out of any mumbling she'd done in her sleep.

So how could he know?

_How else but by having _talked_ to her? _the Anti-Crime Sergeant in her head said gently. _But the _how_ of it isn't the point. What matters is that it proves what you already knew, Maritza - you abandoned her, and she _knew_ you'd abandoned her. Oh, you can piss and moan about how you could have done _more_, and how this pain you're in now is your _penance_, but that's all just self-indulgent shit and you know it. You could always admit that you failed, you could always put yourself up on the fucking cross and play the martyr, but you could never admit that Lettie _knew_ it. But she did. She _felt_ it. She felt you leave, and no matter how bad she was, no matter how much she resisted you, she still needed you. You gave up on her, and so she gave up on herself. _

"No," Cruz murmured weakly. The buzz in the center of her head was back and it was rising again, the steady idiot drone of a hundred-thousand angry yellowjackets in high summer. It was a confused, panicky sound. "I _tried_. I tried - "

_(something about a play-fight on the slopes)_

" - to help her - "

_(and after you even had some guy take your picture with her)_

"- I tried but - "

_(she told me she liked that. Said it felt like you respected her again)_

"- but she would never _let_ me."

But by the end she wasn't even speaking anymore. Her lips were still moving but she had lost her voice.

"You got sick of picking her up and cleaning her off and so you decided it would feel better to just stick to shooting people and locking people up," Noble said smugly. "Easier that way, right? Convenient. You can tell yourself it's all for her but you don't have to actually _face_ her, and when she died it got even _easier_, because then you didn't - "

"_SHUT UP!_" Cruz shrieked suddenly, using almost all of her remaining strength to produce a howl so loud it could almost have drowned out Noble's music, even at top volume. "_SHUT UP OR I'LL KILL YOU, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU NOBLE RIGHT NOW, YOU JUST SEE IF I DON'T!_"

Noble fell silent. The hole that his voice left in the air was immediately filled by the mechanized, rubbery sound of the wipers as they cut double arcs of transparency in the windshield that were almost instantly closed again by the downpour; the sound of the rain itself as it battered against the roof; and Cruz's breathing, which had gone wheezy and strange.

She was limp in her seat now, dazed and only semi-conscious. Some dim part of her doubted that Noble would be stupid enough to try to kickstart the conversation back into gear now, but if he was, she wasn't likely to hear it anyway. The steel ball thudded merrily around in her head. The wasps continued to buzz and squirm and burrow right down into the tender meat of her brain. Her heart hammered in her chest, her pulse a thick beat that rang in her ears and made her eyes throb in their sockets. Big, elaborately shaped splotches of oblivion bloomed and danced and receded in front of her vision.

Through them she saw her sister. She saw Lettie on the ski slope. Lettie bent double and trying to get her ski-boots off. Pretending to overbalance and fall. Attacking her, stuffing snow down her back, how they'd rolled and wrestled and then at last lay side-by-side, looking up at the sky together, an early-evening sky bloated with clouds that filtered the sun into a preternatural spectacle, red shot through with swirls of gold, as if the air up there was on fire, as if the air was on fire and her sister was dead and she could feel all twenty-one years as they came crashing to an end right there in the closed circle formed by her arms, all twenty-one years ending in one breath, one breath that she felt whisper out against her face, one breath that was not renewed by another, and there was nothing she could do, nothing she could ever have done, and all because she had gotten _tired_, so tired, tired of picking her up and cleaning her off, and what could she have done anyway? What?

What could she have done?

(_I'm sorry, 'Ritza)_

Lettie, sitting in the back of the Anti-Crime RMP. Exhausted. Beaten. _Consumed_.

Already consumed.

"God help me," Cruz whispered in Spanish, almost inaudible under thin, silent sobs that shuddered through her whole body, the way the vomiting had less than thirty minutes before. "Oh, God, please help me. Please."

* * *

II.

AC/DC was history and Noble's tape-deck was now belting out something a bit more modern: _Red Rover_ by Big Sugar.

Johnny had liked that one, as she remembered. It was a rock song but it had a spicy, reggae kind of flavor to it. Johnny had always liked stuff like that - anything that could meld two or more styles and still come out sounding clean and polished.

The volume was tuned to a low murmur, and for that she was thankful. She would also soon be rid of Aaron Noble for what she hoped would be a good couple of hours.

For that she was also _very_ thankful.

She had left it all behind now. She had left Lettie behind her, and all that Noble had said about her. There was no choice in the matter. She was too exhausted, to drained to think about that or about anything else; it was all just too much, too much weight to bear up under, and now the run of her thoughts had been forced back into the simple primary colors of physiological need. And at the moment, that meant the need to _sleep_. She just hoped there would be no dreams.

The biker hangout where Noble was supposed to meet his pal Iggy was a strip-joint called the Dirty Rabbit, and it was located deep in one of the worst neighborhoods of the Bronx. To Cruz's relief Noble was not stupid enough to drive them right up to the front door; about a block before they reached the Rabbit, he pulled them off the street and into a fairly sizable parking lot. The surface of this lot (which Cruz absently thought might have actually been a combination courtyard and park to service the local kids, judging by the eroded and almost invisible lines of a basketball court) was a blasted ruin, weeds growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. It was nestled in the L-shaped crook created by two adjacent buildings, both as long-abandoned and ill-maintained as the lot itself.

Noble put the car deep into the shadow of one of the buildings, nudging it as far as he could behind a dumpster that didn't look to have moved in about thirty years.

"With my luck the way it is," he muttered, "today will be the day the Sanitation Department comes to pick it up." He looked over at his dying companion and grunted. "They'd mistake _you_ for garbage, too, I imagine."

"The insults are getting old," Cruz murmured. "Kindergarten was a long time ago."

"Touche," Noble said dryly. Then he clapped his hands briskly, making her wince. "Okay, here's the deal. You ought to be safe enough from prying eyes here. If you need to puke again, you could probably just lean out the door and let 'er rip. Which is what you should have done the first time." He paused, taking a deep breath. Cruz thought it sounded like he might, at _very_ long last, actually be scared. Of Iggy, she imagined, not her. And of the Disciples. He might have pulled the wool over their eyes once, but he wouldn't be as lucky a second time and he knew it. So he was getting scared.

_Good._

He shifted in his seat. There was a _snick!_ and the engine cut off. _Red Rover_ was choked in mid-verse. "I'm gonna be quite a while in there. You realize that?"

Cruz nodded slowly. She realized that. She realized it and she hoped he would take as long as he wanted. She was looking forward to it.

"I mean, I can't just walk in there and say, 'hey man, where's Buford?'" he continued, and now she could definitely hear the nervous tremor in his voice. "Right? Gotta take it slow. Slow and easy. Play beer buddy with him, talk bikes and cars and chicks. They've got pool tables here, too, so he'll want to play me and take some of my money. You're looking at four, maybe even five hours sitting here alone."

Cruz nodded again. Five hours sounded perfect, and she was getting impatient for him to just for fuck's sake _go_. She needed to sleep. She needed to sleep _so badly_. She was terribly thirsty again, too - her throat prickled and her tongue tasted like an old sock - but sleep came first.

She was interested to see if she would wake up. She thought it might be a surprise if she did.

Noble still wasn't moving. She thought he might be staring at her.

She opened her eyes and looked around at him.

Yes, indeedy - Noble was watching her. Rather shrewdly, she thought.

"I'd like my gun back," Noble said. "I'm gonna need it."

She uttered a rusty croak that just barely qualified as a laugh. "Seems to me I had this same conversation with you once before, Noble. Seems to me it didn't end so well."

"Yeah, yeah, deja vu, whatever. I don't like going near these guys unarmed."

"That's rough. You should take some judo lessons."

Noble fell silent and didn't press the point. But he was still watching her. Watching her with that unsettling, calculating intensity.

And what he did next was the last thing she would ever have expected him to do. The absolute _last thing, _short of actually leaning over and soul-kissing her.

He reached behind the seat and, from somewhere under the mess of blankets and unsold books, produced a fresh bottle of water. Then he popped the cap off with his thumb and held it up to her lips.

Cruz looked up at him, again utterly thunderstruck. She was also mildly surprised to find herself flushing with embarrassment. The bottle was different than the one he'd bought for her earlier - this one was a plastic flask with _Adidas_ stenciled on it, the kind of flask she used to take with her when she went jogging. Under the cap was a nozzle, one those little pop-up valves like the kind you get on bottles of dish detergent. At the moment it made her think of the nipple on a baby's bottle ... and here Noble was, trying to get her to drink from it. She felt a fresh surge of heat in her cheeks, the same species of sour humiliation she'd felt back in the hospital.

But she drank. She drank greedily, putting her shaky right hand on the bottle to at least lend herself the illusion that he wasn't holding it up for her. Her lips worked, and she tried hard not to look too much like she was _suckling_. This was not an act of kindness, she knew; this was another way to break her. Another way to demoralize her, dehumanize her, strip away her dignity. She had forced this man to run like a rat in a maze (in what now seemed another lifetime altogether), and now he was getting some payback.

And just when the water was starting to do its work and she was beginning to feel a bit better, Noble pulled it back sharply. She snatched at it, but he was too fast for her.

"I'm not trying to be _mean_, now," he said with prissy sarcasm. "But you'll puke again if you keep up like that. Take a breath and let it settle."

Cruz glared at him, and again a shadow of the woman she had been only a week ago passed over her face - for a moment Noble was once again looking at the narrow-eyed, sneering, withering Sergeant Cruz glare so many had come to fear.

Then it faded.

She took a deep breath and let the water settle.

"More?"

She nodded miserably, three quick little downward strokes of her chin that felt somehow childish. Noble returned the bottle to her lips. "I have a place we can go when I'm finished here," he murmured as she drank. "A house. Buddy of mine owns the deed. I've been thinking it over, and it seems like our best bet. It's empty, no furniture, but I guess we'll manage somehow. It's like I said - I can't take you back to the Bridgeview and we can't just drive around in this heap forever. Guess we're out of options."

Still drinking from the nozzle of the bottle and still feeling that dizzy, flushy humiliation, Cruz was suddenly struck by a mental image that was surreal and yet somehow oddly plausible; hiding out in some dump while Aaron Noble played nursemaid to her. Make a sick little sitcom, wouldn't it? The Odd Couple from Hell. On this week's episode, Noble helps Maritza change her bandage. Noble helps Maritza clean her wound and keep it free of infection. Noble brings Maritza hot chicken soup. Noble holds Maritza's hair while she pukes. Noble helps Maritza dress and undress and bathe, all with the clinical disinterest of a doctor.

He took the bottle away again. She made no attempt to get it back this time.

"You're sick," he said.

"So I've been told."

"I mean you're _sick_ sick, on top of your little war-wound. I don't think it's all that bad now, but you're probably looking at pneumonia. Didn't your mother ever teach you to wear your raincoat when you go out to play, Cruz?"

_Get yourself to bed_, Claudia's voice echoed in her mind, stooped little Claudia Cortez standing in the hall of her apartment building. _Get a hot water bottle in there with you. You'll catch your death if you stand here like this much longer._

"It really hurts, doesn't it?" Noble said quietly after a moment.

She raised her eyes again. He was still studying her, but he wasn't mocking her, she realized; there was even something in his tone that was approaching tenderness. Cruz didn't want any such thing as _tenderness_ from him, not from this man ... but it broke her nonetheless. "Yes," she whispered.

She began to cry softly.

It came so easily now. So easily.

"I can get you something for the pain after we leave here," she heard him say. "You don't want to use meth" - a sour chuckle - "Not the world's best painkiller. Besides which, all the meth's spoken for. But I know some people who deal strictly in prescription drugs. _Safe_ people. Safer than the Disciples, for sure. We can get you something with a little more bite than extra-strength Tylenol. Something of a morphine-based nature."

"I'm not buying this," she rasped.

Noble cocked his head - not because he didn't know what she meant but because he couldn't even hear her. "What?"

"Why, Noble? Why are you doing this? I told you everything ... everything I could ... so why?"

He smiled thinly. "I'm not falling for you, if that's what you're thinking. You're a killer and you're a criminal and you ought to spend the rest of your life breaking rocks and having broom-handles shoved up your nethers by big butch mamas. But I'm not done with you just yet, Two-Bags. I'm still intrigued here. Still curious. What I'm the most curious about is just how far you're willing to go with this thing. That's what I want to see, Cruz. I want to see just how far you are prepared to take your obsession. I wasn't kidding when I said I could get a book out of you. I think I really can.

"And you have to understand something else," he continued as he opened the door and got out of the car. "I've been in worse places than this. You think this is the first hairy situation I've ever been in, Cruz? I was getting into and out of hairy situations back when you were still crawling around pissing in your drawers." He smiled coldly. "Keep my gun, if it makes you feel better. Just remember that I'm the only way you're ever gonna get this thing done. This thing you feel you need to do in order to die happy."

He started to turn away. Then, abruptly, he leaned back into the car.

"I had this buddy I used to talk to about certain things - matters of philosophy. Matters of religion. _Why-are-we-here-where-are-we-going_ type stuff. Anyhow, one day he and I were talking about religious fanaticism. You know - how people can always believe that God is on their side no matter what. No matter what they do, no matter who they slaughter, no matter what their agenda is - even genocide - they always think Right is on their side. A week after we had that discussion, the planes hit the towers and the towers fell. My buddy's wife was in one of them. You know what he said to me at her funeral?"

Cruz looked up dazedly. A thin little rill of water trickled from the corner of her mouth. She was slipping out into the stratosphere again; only about one word in every ten Noble said was getting through.

"He said to me: 'Hell is overflowing with the righteous.'" Noble straightened up. "You might want to think on that one a little bit, Cruz."

With that he slammed the door and was gone into the rain. Cruz watched him cross the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot (basketball court, playground, whatever the fuck it had been) and disappear around a corner.

Then she put her head back and almost immediately she was slipping, slipping, the world dropping out from under her as she fell into a sleep so deep it was almost coma.

But there were dreams.


	16. Chapter 10: Bosco

As is custom, I'll say thanks for the latest reviews :)

So Chapter 10 is here - we're finally into the double digits! It's a little on the long side, but we're drawing very close to the the final hours of the story's events. It goes to Chapter 14 - 11 will be fairly long, 12 will be medium-length, 13 will probably be very short, and 14 I'm still not too sure about. But at least there aren't any big overhauls this time ;)

* * *

Chapter 10

_Bosco_

I.

Karen Tuttle had the largest breasts Maurice Boscorelli had ever seen.

That, however, wasn't what made them special. Size alone could not have impressed him. Maurice (Bosco to his friends, Bos to his close friends and _only_ to his close friends) had already seen a respectable number of them in his admittedly tender sixteen years - big and small, firm and doughy, draped and (on one or two very lucky occasions) undraped. But Karen's were a step above the rest, not because of their sheer size but because of their _shape_. They appeared to be perfect globes. _Perfect_. And the hook was, they were _natural_. A few years later, when the creative use of silicone would become more commonplace, Bosco would see women who sported similar endowments to Karen's ... and in almost every instance they would prove to have been purchased for obscene amounts of money. Karen's came straight off Mother Nature's own assembly line, one-hundred-percent warm flesh and blood. That fact had mesmerized Bosco again and again; all natural, no sag, round as grapefruits and twice as big, coming together in a cleavage so perfect it almost looked as if it had been _drawn_ on.

There was, however, a sizable problem (pun enthusiastically intended), at least from Bosco's point of view: Karen was a dweeb. A carefully camouflaged dweeb, but a dweeb was a dweeb and there was no getting around it. She was a sort of walking contradiction, an anomaly in the strict social caste-system of high school. On the one hand, she was magazine-cover-hot, popular, pretty and the object of desire of every boy in the school over the age of twelve. On the _other_ hand, she was a consummate bookworm, a wet blanket at parties (when she could be coaxed into going at all), and she harbored an almost pathological fear of alcohol. And the name _Tuttle_ didn't exactly help matters - to Bosco it sounded like what you'd call an abnormal growth on an embarrassing part of the body.

In addition to all of that, Karen seemed oblivious to her appearance and the effect it had on most of the male gender. Where Maritza Cruz had learned to use her looks as both a tool and a weapon by age fourteen, Karen seemed to have no idea she even _had_ looks. Her posture was best described as a colorless slouch, she dressed dumpily, and she responded to compliments (crude and tasteful alike) with a confused rabbit-in-the-headlights look. At the end of the day, what you had in Karen Tuttle was a geek trapped in a cheerleader's body, and under normal circumstances somebody like that would have flown far below Maurice Boscorelli's radar.

The range of _normal circumstances, _however, did not encompass things like the big pair of guns she was packing. Bosco, who proudly claimed to have lost his virginity at a ridiculously young age (the exact number hovered somewhere between eleven and fourteen, depending on his mood), had come to see himself as a sort of connoisseur of the female form. Not just a red-blooded heterosexual male but a kind of _girl-enthusiast_, if you will. And he very much wanted to get a detailed scientific study done on Karen Tuttle's God-given natural assets. A peek would go over well, at the very least. A squeeze would be better. A _taste_ ... well, only naive boys dare to dream.

Bosco dated her for six grueling weeks through the eleventh grade. Working only from his own preconceptions about how female human beings should behave, Bosco found Karen almost unbearably high-maintenance. The girl should have been _proud_ of what God had given her, she should have been _generous_ with it while it was still young and fresh, and yet trying to get anywhere with her was like picking a locked safe. You had to _do things_ with her. _Romantic_ things. You had to talk to her. Talk _with_ her. About _real-world_ stuff, like politics and religion and nuclear war and nuclear power and the state of the economy and where they would all go and what they would do after high school. You _could_ sit and cuddle with her while discussing these things ... but you always had to keep your hands at a prudent distance from any interesting places.

If Karen wasn't in the mood to talk shop, what you did then was watch TV with her. Karen's favorite shows were all British sitcoms, which she called "britcoms" long before it was fashionable to do so. Though Bosco found the term suicidally nerdy, he put up with it, just as he put up with having to watch the shows themselves. It was even a bit of a relief whenever some quality britcom time rolled around - he found he could put up with the shows more easily than he could a lot of the other romantic and political crap, and he had to admit that some of them weren't even half bad. The raunchier ones, anyway. The ones with a lot of sexual innuendo and butt-pinching. The ones with lots of cleavage. Benny Hill chasing half-naked women around at warp-speed. Bosco liked that one.

Karen's favorite, however, was more of the pratfalls-and-slapstick stripe, a show from the seventies called _Fawlty Towers_. It was about a small hotel in the English countryside run by a dysfunctional husband-and-wife team, Basil and Sybil Fawlty. Basil, played by _Monty Python's_ John Cleese, was an irritable, neurotic stringbean who insulted his customers, routinely abused a hapless little Spanish waiter named Manuel, and could almost always be found at the beginning of a chain-reaction of absurd misunderstandings and coincidences, mishaps that usually resulted in Basil getting his proper comeuppance at the end of the show. His wife Sybil, who at first glance seemed to be a gossipy airhead, usually just had to sit back and watch Basil hang himself, after which she'd calmly move in and pick up the pieces.

It was the that ancient sitcom (_britcom_, Karen's dry, cultured voice immediately corrected in his head) that Bosco thought of when he first stepped through the front doors of the Bridgeview Hotel.

Part of it was the overall presentation of the building and the decor inside, but mostly it was because of the proprietors. Not only were they a husband-and-wife team in the Basil-and-Sybil tradition, they also happened to be of British extraction. Bosco met them before he actually met them; when he walked through the hotel's front doors he found himself in a small foyer, where the first thing to hit the eye was a large framed photograph of the Bridgeview's owner/operators. Under the photo was a little gold plaque that introduced them as Tom and Iris Hendrickson, originally of Sheffield, England, later of London, England, later of Chicago, Illinois, and finally of New York, New York.

Iris and Tom, however, bore little resemblance to their fictional counterparts. Tom looked nothing like John Cleese; he appeared to be short and stout, with a broad, jowly face overtopped by a thick unibrow, a wide, liver-lipped grin, and greasy-looking black hair swept over a prominent bald spot in one of the worst comb-overs Bosco had ever seen. Iris was the taller of the two, and if you wanted to compare her to an actress Bosco would have said she looked more like Sigourney Weaver than anyone; slim, raven-haired, strikingly pretty with piercing dark eyes and an impossibly even, impossibly white smile. In the picture she was standing beside her husband with a companionable arm slung around his shoulder, towering an easy five or six inches above him.

The idea behind the photo and its accompanying plaque was simple and obvious: when you entered the Bridgeview, you knew right away who you would be dealing with - a standard-issue Pleasant, Nonthreatening English Couple.

After getting an eyeful of Iris and Tom you would then turn right, go through another set of double doors, and you'd find yourself in the lobby. And that was where the nostalgia really hit home; the place had a certain undefinable English charm that made Bosco think back to his high school days, Karen Tuttle, Karen Tuttle's improbably perfect pair of ta-tas, and that show she used to make him watch with her. That show he'd watched with her willingly, all the time believing that by doing these things with her - talking politics, being romantic, laughing at her lame jokes and at all the right places in her favorite shows - he would eventually reach the Promised Land that was hiding under her dumpy, unflattering sweaters.

And he did. It took six weeks to do it, but he got there. The six week "relationship" had peaked with two very hot-and-heavy makeout sessions, which included two magnificent feels: one _through_ her sweater and - oh _rapture_! - one _underneath_.

And after the second, Karen had promptly broken up with him.

Because she'd known. All along Karen had known what Bosco's real game was; in the end she'd turned out to be a lot less naive than he'd thought she was. When he cornered her in the hall the next day (not feeling quite as slick as he did six weeks before) and asked her _why_, her answer was simple, mildly stated, and profoundly mind-boggling to a sixteen-year-old boy who considered himself a stud from God's top shelf: she had grown tired of him.

She had grown _tired_ of him.

Karen explained that she _had_ liked him at first, truly, genuinely _liked_ him, but she had gotten sick of him. She was sick of his cocky, swaggering attitude. Of his constant pawings and lewd suggestions and inept attempts to undress her. Of the insulting, patronizing, ass-kissing crap he would spew whenever they talked politics or sat down to watch TV together. These were her exact words, too, spoken in her cool, matter-of-fact classroom voice, as if she was reciting equations from her algebra book. She was tired of him laughing like a jackass at her jokes and her favorite shows. She was tired of him nodding and agreeing soberly when the subject turned to the Cold War and the prospect of the whole world becoming a radioactive cinder by the end of the decade. Karen Tuttle had put honest effort into the relationship, she'd liked him, trusted him, and she had simply gotten tired of his ignorance.

And in the end, she'd discovered that she could live without him just fine. No tears required.

And what did that make her, Bosco thought now, but just another link in a long chain of women whose patience he had stretched and eventually snapped? Just one link in a long, long chain of failures, the end of which he'd reached a little over an hour ago with Faith Yokas.

Six weeks it had taken Karen. As opposed to nearly a decade in Faith's case. Not too bad on the whole; that was the all-time record, right there, and Faith held it. They'd never been lovers, of course (it _might_ have happened if Fred hadn't been in the picture, although Bosco kind of doubted it), so maybe that had something to do with the unusual length of time Faith had stuck by him. She'd bitched and moaned and nattered at him for years about his many, many, _many_ faults (not the least of which was how shabbily he treated her gender), but she'd always been there for him ... probably because she'd never gotten close enough to him to see just how much of a complete fuck-up he really was.

Bosco gritted his teeth as he pushed through the double doors into the Bridgeview's lobby. Fuck-up? He'd never thought of it in such blunt terms before, but okay, sure, that's what he was - a fuck-up. Of course that's what he was. He'd screwed up and he knew he had to acknowledge that. And he knew that he had every reason in the world to feel guilty.

It was just that he was getting a bit uneasy about how that guilt seemed to be manifesting itself. He was ashamed of himself, and yet he was ashamed of allowing himself to _be_ so ashamed ... which in turn made him more ashamed. That was the paradox, or vicious circle, or whatever you wanted to call it, and it added up to the perfect recipe for self-pity. For little acts of childish, willful indulgence, like yesterday's spur-of-the-moment stopover at the bar - _oh look at how low I've sunk, woe is me_. He was already running damage-control on that one, telling himself that the binge was just a one-time thing, just something he'd needed to get out of his system ... and yet it seemed to be getting easier and easier to backslide into that kind of thinking, didn't it? Whipping Boy Bosco.Bosco the big disappointment, Bosco the loser. Just like Pop. Just like little bro. Not only could Faith look down her nose at him, not only could John-Sully-Sullivan look down _his_ big shiny drunk's nose at him, now Mikey could get in on some of the action, too. And if Mikey the coked-up failure can spit on you, you know you've screwed up BAD.

And to think - yesterday he had to be drunk to feel this sorry for himself. Today he seemed to be doing just fine sober. It disgusted him. Which in turn confused him. Which disgusted him more. Or something like that. Christ, it was all so _complicated_. He was not a man accustomed to dealing with _feelings_, particularly when they seemed to be so densely layered and in a constant state of flux. You had all these odd contradictions and roundabout paradoxes - he was ashamed of being ashamed, guilty of feeling guilty. Part of him wanted to drink, sulk, and wallow; another side of his brain told him to yank the thumb out of his mouth and pull his fucking pants up. Grow up. _Suck_ it up. This was the same voice that had advised him to back off and slink away when he was sitting outside Faith's, working out how to make his entrance. The same voice that said _I told you so_ when she slammed the door in his face, the same voice that then told him to _get over it_ immediately after. Crybaby, crybaby, gonna cry some more, crybaby? Or are you gonna stop whining about being a fuck-up and get on with your life, such as it is?

Faith herself might have called this his macho side. His insensitive side. His Karen-Tuttle-tit-grabbing-side. His oh-so-very _Bosco_-side. He thought about the day he'd gone to see O'Malley down on the docks - O'Malley as in _Brian_ O'Malley, the ex-cop-turned-psychologist, psychotherapist, something-or-other. Some kind of shrink, anyway. Bosco had been so indifferent (and so _defensive_) that he barely remembered the experience - just that O'Malley lived on a boat and had casually kicked him out for refusing to give direct answers. And that he'd gone happily. He didn't need shrinks. He didn't need to talk about his feelings or "categorize his emotions" or cry on the shoulder of another man.

_I won't be back_, he'd said.

To which O'Malley had replied smoothly, without even missing a beat: _you're not invited_.

And now it was almost as if that arrogance was finally coming around to really bite him on the ass. He'd come through that bad patch - late 2001, early 2002 - the bad patch that had included Hobart and the visit to O'Malley's houseboat, and once he'd come out he'd fallen right back into his old ways and attitudes. He hadn't learned a fucking thing.

_And here you are._

Yep. Here he was. No tightness in the chest this time. No panic attacks. No false heart attacks. Just confusion, and heaps and heaps of that tempting, disturbingly _comfortable_ self-pity.

Maybe when he was finished his business at the Bridgeview he ought to look O'Malley up and give therapy another shot. Throw himself on the guy's mercy. Even at this point Bosco didn't like the prospect of it, but thinking about all of this was starting to make his head hurt. Half the time he didn't know _how_ he felt. He just knew that he was at a very dangerous stage in whatever it was he was going through. Jurgens, the Saintly and Sympathetic bartender, had said something to that effect yesterday. O'Malley would probably agree. He was in a bad place, worse than any he'd ever been in before, worse than after 9/11, worse than after Hobart, worse than the moral conundrum with Cruz over Stevie Nunez. That sense of the future just kept right on hitting him, the future he'd laid out for both himself and for others, the weight of what he'd done not only to his own life but to Faith's life, to his mother's life, even to Cruz's life. He'd made Hobart's -

(_I ought to just shoot you before you screw up the lives of everybody who loves you)_

prediction come true; what he'd done was like throwing a pebble into a lake. He'd made his own choices, but those choices had created ripples. Repercussions. Every now and then it would all hit him full-on, right in the face, the way it did back at Faith's apartment just before she shut the door on him. But most of the time he just couldn't take it all at once like that, one monster dose. There was too much to fit into his head, too much to get a handle on. There was Faith -

(_quitting, unemployed, Fred not the most reliable guy in the world, two kids to feed, Charlie, Emily, quitting NYPD, lost her love of the job, oh well, too bad, tried to kill one of her own, driven to murder, that's the way it was and is, blood on her hands, blood on her hands and she couldn't take it, the feel, the look, the SMELL of it, two kids to feed, Charlie and Emily, and no job and Fred isn't the most reliable guy in the world_)

Cruz -

(_maimed, left arm useless, prison, Riker's Island, Women's Correctional, ex-cop with a long string of arrests thrown into gen-pop, dead-bitch-walking, beaten, tortured, shanked in the back in the shower, throat cut, eyes gouged out, bloody water swirling down the drains _Psycho_-style, vicious female laughter from above, couldn't defend herself you see, weakened, disabled, useless left arm, oh well, probably wanted to die anyway_)

Ma -

(_betrayed, heartbroken, one son a failure and a criminal and now the other's exactly the same, after years of being beaten, living in fear, making excuses and telling lies, lies breeding lies, and now one son's a junkie and the other's a failure and a criminal - a _fuck-up_, say Amen - the son who was the only good thing she had, the only good thing she ever did, the only thing she could really be proud of, the only bright spot in her life, and now she doesn't even have that_)

Faith again -

(_quitting because of me_)

Cruz again -

(_die in prison because of me_)

Ma again -

(_the only good thing in her life gone because of me_)

And on and on and on like that, and then back to the start again. The result was total data overload. So it had to stay in the margins, a shapeless, ominous thing only half-glimpsed in his peripheral vision, like some slinking predatory animal that only attacks when its prey has its back turned.

That was what scared him about therapy - if he couldn't make a clear picture of his own emotional state, maybe there was a sound psychological reason for it. O'Malley had pried and chipped away at him, trying to get him to _describe_ everything, go into sordid detail. _The more you won't, the more I want to_ - that was one thing Bosco remembered him saying. And Bosco _didn't_ want to, he didn't want to close his eyes and purposely call up all that crap again. He was afraid of what he'd see. He'd been afraid then, and he was terrified now.

His _Bosco-side_ seemed to know this, and immediately kicked in whenever he tried to figure things out. His pet defense-mechanism. If Cruz's inner voice spoke in the tones of a kindly father, Bosco's was a kind of angry midget (an "angry little dude," as Vernon Marks had once called him), a surly little bastard that heckled and made fun, told him he was being an ass. Told him to stop acting like an old menopausal woman. And told him to stop trying to _categorize his emotions_ like some afternoon talkshow fruit.

At the moment, however, he thought he could categorize at least one emotion, and it was one he was pretty sure he was entitled to: _grief_.

After all, consider this: Faith Yokas _had_ booted him off her doorstep just a little over sixty minutes ago, and he knew that this time it was for keeps. Because he knew _Faith_. To fall back on a tired point, he'd known her the better part of a decade, and she couldn't have fooled him on her best day. A few years less and he might - _might_ - have been able to lie to himself and say that she was just screwing with him, that she was still reeling from what she'd done to Cruz and so she had decided to play some kind of nasty little head-game in an attempt to get back at him. Her own little brand of self-pity, her version of the gleefully deliberate drinking jag. He shows up at her door and she jumps right down his throat, happy to have another opportunity to lay into him. What's today, kids? Why, it's _Punish Bosco Some More Day!_

That wasn't Faith. Even so, there was still no doubt in his mind that her little speech had been rehearsed. _It's all different now, I need to start over, I hope something good comes out of this for you, farewell, goodbye, don't let the door hit you on the ass_ - all of that smacked of the pre-meditated. Faith didn't play head-games - couldn't have played head-games even if she'd wanted to, by the look of her. What he'd witnessed this morning had some serious thought thrown behind it. Faith really _was_ quitting the NYPD - no question. Faith really _was_ kicking him out of her life for good - no question. False hope was no longer an option here, and Bosco knew it.

And he could grieve for that, couldn't he? For those ten years, if nothing else?

He could, and he was. He'd left her apartment on the verge of tears. There was no point trying to deny that. Who was there to deny it _to_ but himself? His macho-side? His _Bosco_-side, a.k.a. the angry little midget? Did he really give a damn if some lowbrowed part of his own psyche made fun of him, insisted that he was a self-pitying pussy? Not really. He'd crossed back to his Mustang in the rain, slid behind the wheel, and cried silently there for about five minutes.

And what got him started wasn't even the little thrashing he'd taken at Faith's door. It was the lunch breaks. The 10-63's with Faith beside him, maybe fries and burgers coffees between them, shooting the shit about ... what? Well, anything, really. The latest domestic adventures in the Yokas household. Emily and Charlie's little growing pains. Bosco's latest adventures in female conquest. Little jabs at - or exasperated arguments over - each other's shortcomings (always maintaining safe boundaries, though, always within the limits of good taste and never as ugly as it got near the end). Or maybe broader philosophical debate: the War on Drugs, terrorism, the state of this brave new Twenty-First Century world. New York cop cynicism. Deep Thought in Five-Five David amidst the greasy french-fry bags and paper cups.

That was gone now along with everything else, and he could grieve for it, and he did. There was nobody to see him, so it was okay.

He got it out of his system and drove away. The only trouble was, he had no idea where he was supposed to go. Not in the philosophical sense, but in the plain-jane _literal_ sense, as in: _which direction should I point the nose of my car in now_? He had all the rest of a rainy Saturday stretched out in front of him, and no ideas on how he might fill in the time. So what to do? Where to go?

The first and most obvious idea was to go back to the bar. Not his Ma's bar this time, of course, but another. He'd already shit in that nest, so it was time to go find a new one. One where there would be no Ma and no Vinnie Jurgens and none of that delicious irony. He could booze himself up, surrender himself to it willingly ... and this time, guiltlessly.

Or he could go back to his apartment. He could get drunk there just as easily, with the added bonus that he could flip on the TV and keep up with developments as they happened. Watch the story unfold on the small screen. Watch ol' Wolf Blitzer speculate on Maritza Cruz's motivations. Watch Mallory, the humble-yet-unapologetic NYPD spokesman, smooth over both the Anti-Crime mess and Cruz's escape. Watch panel discussions on police corruption, which would become _the_ hot-button topic for about a week before being buried under the Next Big Story. And he could listen to his own name as it was spoken by any number of news anchors, from the obscure on up to the famous.

Or he really _could_ go looking for Brian O'Malley. He didn't think he seriously would ... but there really wasn't anything stopping him from at least giving it a shot, was there?

_Or_ he could dismiss all of those ideas and go back the other way, back to his mother's place. He could try for a second chance. Bear with her, tolerate the half-hidden anger and disappointment in the hope that she might eventually come through it.

In the end, none of these options held very much appeal.

And that was when another possible course of action opened up before him, one he'd never thought of before, one that seemed perversely obvious in a forehead-smacking, _why-didn't-I-think-of-that_ sort of way. It was a course of action that Cruz, had she known anything of what he was doing or thinking, could have identified with.

He still had his off-duty gun. Bosco supposed it would have to be re-christened his _personal_ gun now, but he wasn't about to split hairs with himself - a gun was a gun, in this case the little Smith & Wesson automatic he'd worn in the ankle holster. He still had it. And he had plenty of ammunition for it, too. Eighty rounds or thereabouts, at last count.

In the end, though, he'd only need one. One was usually all it took. In the mouth, of course. _Through the sinuses, behind the gums, look out brain, here it comes!_

Of course this was just a _thought_, one that Bosco knew would come to nothing. The idea of him - of Maurice Louis Boscorelli - committing suicide was pure bullshit. He'd never do it. _Never. _He might get drunk, and he might go and make a ridiculous, maudlin spectacle of himself in front of the woman who used to be his best friend, but all of that was still a pretty far cry from putting an end to himself with his ex-backup pistol. Wasn't any way to solve anything. And it _didn't_ solve anything. Not one damned thing.

He'd never kill himself. You could stake your life on _that_.

But he was confused, wasn't he? His emotional state was all over the map, and he was smack in the middle of what Vinnie Jurgens had called a "dangerous time." Eating his Smith & Wesson was only one idea among many - and an idea _is_ only an idea, after all - but he wasn't completely sure it would stay that way. The fact that he'd even _thought_ of suicide scared the piss out of him, and he was worried that if he stayed immobile too long, if he let himself stagnate in a bar or back in his apartment, the idea of simply ending himself might just keep rolling around in his head. Might start picking up steam. Might start to _snowball_, getting bigger and bigger until it started to look a bit more ... well ...

More _plausible_.

So he'd left Faith's and headed back in the general direction of his apartment in a kind of aimless, zigzagging line. For an hour he drove around, thinking. He sat at red lights, thinking. He circled the streets he used to patrol, thinking. He couldn't think about Faith or what she'd said or what she was going to do, couldn't think about himself or what _he_ was going to do. So he began to think about Cruz. Cruz and the Great Mercy Prison-Break of '03. He thought about Faith's crazy tale - Swersky coming to her apartment with an offer to post a car outside the building, as a kind of anti-Cruz precaution. Because they thought Cruz was on the prowl. They thought she might have gotten her hands (or _hand_, anyway) on a gun, and was now on some kind of quest to hunt down anyone who had participated in her destruction.

Swersky was overreacting - that was what Bosco had started off believing. Because it was stupid, wasn't it? Considering the strain Cruz would have had to put herself under just to stand up, it seemed far more likely she would simply wear herself down and collapse. She'd drop, someone would (hopefully) find her, call 9-1-1, and that would be that. Back to Mercy she'd go, this time in restraints. Cruz scouring the streets for revenge, on the other hand, hunting down her enemies one-by-one like a maniac in a cheap horror flick ... _that_ was ridiculous. Bosco had listened to Mr. Mouthpiece say much the same thing on the news yesterday evening. Cruz was a seriously wounded woman and she needed to be in a hospital. She needed morphine or Demerol or whatever they shot you full of these days to keep you settled. And she needed operations - surgically speaking, her shoulder was still a work-in-progress. She needed _care_.

Bosco, however, was starting to wonder.

Cruz _had_ escaped from Mercy. Unlikely as that seemed, it was still fact - apparently she'd slipped away right under the noses of both the hospital staff and her police guard. Now take that one small step further: wasn't it possible that she _might _be able to last on the outside? Bosco was beginning to think maybe it was. After all, just look at how she'd acted in Noble's hotel room: her arm practically blown off, blood pouring out of her in a torrent ... and yet the pain and shock and trauma Bosco would have expected to come with such a horrific wound seemed minimal, almost nonexistent. _Oh God, I've been shot, please help me _would have been anyone else's reaction, assuming they were in any shape to talk at all. But with Maritza Cruz you had something more along the lines of: _Get out of my way so I can kill the bitch who did this to me_. Her first thought was not of her own safety or survival. Her first thought - her first _instinct_ - was to strike out. _Superhuman_ was the word Schaeffer had used, and while Bosco thought that might be stretching it just a bit, there was certainly no doubt in his mind that she was remarkably strong.

Physically strong, anyway. As for _mentally_, he still couldn't even venture a guess at what might be going through her mind right now. Whatever her mental state had been before the shooting (blinded by grief and rage and her own stubborn nature, certainly, but _not_ outright crazy, which was the theory Faith probably still clung to like a drowning woman), something in her head had obviously come loose in the meantime. She might have the willpower necessary to stay on her feet, but that didn't mean she was thinking clearly.

Quite the opposite.

To Bosco, the whole thing was starting to sound uncomfortably familiar.

Until now he had been busy comparing himself to Glen Hobart, believing that he was treading in the sharpshooter's footsteps when the more obvious parallel was right in front of him: both Glen Hobart and Maritza Cruz had been backed against the fence, and both had responded by going section-eight in spectacular fashion. The only difference was in the approach. Hobart had intentionally forced an ESU sniperto kill him - an ESU sniper _like himself _- possibly to make some kind of twisted point. The basic nature of his job was killing with a high-powered rifle, shooting from the shadows, shooting from the _back_, never seeing his target's eyes nor allowing them to see his. He was, in effect, an exterminator of human beings, the guy they called out to do the dirty deed when every other avenue had been exhausted. Hobart had subsequently chosen the most appropriate means by which to die - a man of his own skill and trade. Hobart had chosen Suicide by Irony. Possibly even in the hope that his death would haunt and perhaps someday destroy the life of the unfortunate cop behind the rifle. In twenty years maybe it'll be _that_ poor bastard up on the roof. The cycle, after all, has to continue.

It was possible that Cruz was doing something similar, committing an elaborate and very dramatic kind of suicide in an attempt to make some weird moral statement. _I'm Sergeant Cruz, and I stood up for what I believed in right to the bitter end!_ Something like that.

Ultimately, however, Bosco didn't know. Hobart he could understand - Cruz he could not. With Cruz he could only theorize. When he traced the progression of his entire relationship with her, what he found was that he didn't really know a goddam thing about her, and he never had. He'd never had any appreciable success in figuring her out, and it seemed he still couldn't.

And that was part of the reason he couldn't drop it. He had to keep running the whole thing over and over in his head, from the moment he met Cruz right up to the moment where her strength gave out and she keeled over in Noble's room. Trying to pinpoint exactly _what_ went wrong, _where_ it went wrong, and most importantly, _why_ it went wrong. Not so much with Cruz but with _himself_. The woman had made a complete fool out of him, made a _criminal_ out of him, made a scapegoat out of him, _blinded_ him, and even at this late stage his ego just didn't seem to want to deal with that.

He knew that it had started out as a purely physical attraction - nothing unusual there. Blame it on the black miniskirt and belly-baring top she'd been wearing the first time he clapped eyes on her. He could remember that so clearly: Cruz coming in for her midnight shift, reeking of some cheap (but very enticing) perfume and practically popping out of that sweet little outfit. And he'd literally smacked right into her. You had Cruz coming up the stairs and Bosco, exhausted after a hard first day working Anti-Crime, on his way down. Cruz coming up, not watching where she was going, squawking away at somebody on her cellphone ... and then, predictably enough, she rudely orders _him_ to clear a path when he almost knocks her sprawling.

Ah, the love was already in the air, wasn't it?

_Something_ was, at any rate. Even though he was bone-tired at the time, he remembered how he just _had_ to stay to get a better look at this leggy, busty newcomer. Getting ready to go undercover, by the look of her. A vice sting. Catch a few johns with that low-cut top and the butt-hugging miniskirt that seemed to magically _disappear_ when she bent over. There was a thong somewhere under there, as well - Cruz apparently found it uncomfortable, and she'd let the whole world know about it. A "postage-stamp's worth of polyester up her ass" was the exact phrase she'd used. Bosco had never forgotten that one. So perfectly crude. So perfectly _Cruz_.

That was when he knew he'd be staying on with Anti-Crime. For _sure_.

It wasn't _just_ Cruz, of course - he still liked Anti-Crime for that tight sense of camaraderie and the in-the-trenches feel of the job - but it was _mostly_ Cruz. So in a way it had been like Karen Tuttle all over again, in that he'd been intensely attracted to a woman he couldn't get anywhere near. In the beginning Cruz seemed to see him almost as a liability, just some stupid asshole looking to prove the size of his balls in a job he knew nothing about, a fool she was stuck babysitting until he lost interest and went back to Uniform. She was almost impossible to impress, ordering him around like a dog, snapping at everything he said and scoffing at every idea he put forward. Being treated in such a way - especially by a woman - should have bothered him, but it didn't. If anything, her arrogance (and her inaccessibility) just excited him. It _challenged_ him. He was willing to take her orders, learn from her, and _earn_ her respect. He _wanted_ to be Anti-Crime. _If I am blind, Teacher, then help me see_. In that way it was also a bit like Glen Hobart all over again - Bosco eagerly picking up new tactics and techniques from an old pro.

Only this time the "old pro" also happened to be one seriously fine-looking woman. And the techniques she taught included blackmail, creatively tweaking reports, outright _lying_ where necessary, and the fabrication of evidence. And none of that had bothered him, because sometimes you had to bend (or break) the rules to do what was right - that was central to the Sergeant Cruz philosophy. Bosco didn't need a bitchy Anti-Crime cop to point out what he knew already, but Cruz at least validated it. He and the Sarge were on the same page when it came to deciding the lesser of two evils: making up a Dying Declaration, or letting a vicious child-killing gangster like Vernon Marks walk away clean.

Faith Yokas, on the other hand ... well, Faith didn't always understand, did she? Bosco had admired Cruz's conviction, and he'd taken it as a liberating change from Faith's often rigid (and often naive) codes of conduct. Not once did it occur to him that it might actually be a warning sign - by the time they'd put Vernon Marks away, he was thoroughly immersed in the Maritza Cruz Experience. The partnership was entirely professional, of course, but in many ways what they had was almost better than sex. It was a kind of living romantic adventure, romance of a sort Bosco could really understand and get behind: fighting crime in some of New York's worst neighborhoods with his beautiful warrior-woman at his side.

Of course he never would have put it in such deliriously moronic terms, but it described the basic situation: when he was with Cruz, he drew a kind of satisfaction from the job that he never got with Faith. _Never_. There was just that one missing element; if only there could be something more, something _physical_. Then everything would be right with the world.

But Cruz was always just Cruz, just the Anti-Crime Sergeant (i.e. his _boss_) and Bosco was just getting ready to give up hope when Lettie came into the picture.

And God _bless_ the little dope-fiend! What an exciting development that had been - Cruz had a kid sister who just happened to be a junkie! And he, Maurice Boscorelli, had a kid _brother_ who just happened to be of a very similar stripe! At last he and Cruz had something in common, a chance to bond over something a little deeper than a questionable report or made-up confession. Lettie had changed the entire dynamic of their relationship without even knowing it.

And think of the possibilities! He could offer Cruz advice. Compare notes with her. Swap tales of rehab and relapse with her. He could be there for her. _Empathize _with her. He knew that Cruz, being Cruz, might resist these efforts at first - and she had - but Bosco thought she'd come around eventually. He could just chip away at her, prove to her that he knew the score. That much really _was_ true, at least - he knew it hurt. Of course it did! It hurt to see somebody you loved chewing themselves to pieces!

He'd been all locked and loaded to exploit the situation, even after Lettie was dead and he'd found Cruz slouched at the end of that deserted hallway at Mercy. And why not? There she was, sitting there on the windowsill, staring into space, her face haggard and smudged with grime from the day's festivities. No Anti-Crime Sergeant in sight. Just one very tired, very dirty, very shaken-up woman, a woman who'd just lost the last of her family in as brutal and pointless a way as you could want. When would he ever see Maritza Cruz like this again, so open and so vulnerable? When would he ever have a better chance to move in on her?

In the end his better nature had won out, and he'd turned to leave her to her grief in peace. It was _Cruz_ who asked him to stay with her, and he did, and as he listened to her talk about her sister and the life they'd had (the elder trying to protect the younger from the world and from herself, knowing it was futile, trying anyway) he inevitably started to think about his own brother. Lettie had overdosed - Bosco had always harbored a secret fear that Mikey might do the same thing at any time. Someday he'd get the phone call, the "we're sorry to inform you" call, the one that always seems to come in the dead of night. What would he do then? More to the point, what would _Ma_ do? How would he ever tell her?

As he listened to Cruz talk about her sister, it began to dawn on him that he ought to feel like a right son of a bitch - a realization that, ironically, came to him sounding a lot like Faith's voice in his ear. Faith telling him that he must be one miserable, hard-up son of a bitch to want to use this woman's hurt as a way to get into her pants. Especially when it was a hurt they both shared.

And right there, for the first time, he saw the potential for something real with Cruz. Not just a little after-hours bump 'n grind, but something _real_. If he played his cards right. If he was smart.

The problem was, he _hadn't_ been smart. He'd sat down next to her on that windowsill for all the wrong reasons, and that was why he'd ended up at her apartment later that night: he'd wanted to make a fresh and honest attempt at offering his sympathies.

He did _not_ go over there in the hopes of getting laid. He was quite sure of that.

But of course he _did_ get laid, and though Cruz tried to brush it off as a one-night stand, it wasn't long before it was a regular thing.

And nothing changed. Their relationship had all the hallmarks of a real _relationship_: he'd slept with her (in bed she was exactly as she was on the job: _do this, do that, you're not doing that right, do it this way_ ... and he'd loved every second of it), he'd showered with her, eaten breakfast and dinner with her, and yet she had always remained a mystery to him. She'd always kept herself at arms' length, always made sure she was just a little bit inaccessible, and in that way she was nothing like any woman he'd ever been with - including the infamously two-faced Karen Tuttle. Cruz rarely wanted to snuggle up and be held after sex, and she _never_ wanted to talk. Those were things Bosco usually found quite annoying ... and yet he missed them when they weren't there. It _confused_ him when they weren't there. Cruz didn't want to be romanced. She had no taste for pillow-talk. After the act was done she just did what men are often accused of - she rolled over and that was that, conversation over. _Wham-bam-thankya-man_.

In the end the best Bosco could come up with was that it started as a physical attraction, moved on to self-righteous pride, became a messed-up sort of comfort thing, and then went downhill from there. In the first few weeks after Lettie's death Cruz had slept badly; tough as she was, she'd still needed to have some human contact in the face of all that she'd lost. But by the time they reached the Noble/Nunez mess she'd come through her grief, and suddenly it was all about control. She'd used him all along, first as a kind of teddy-bear (albeit one with a penis), then as a sort of boneheaded henchman, the guy who did all the dirty work and functioned as her safety net. Using sex to control him in both instances. _Sign this report, Bosco. Do me on the couch, Bosco. Back me up on this lie, Bosco. Doggy-style now, Bosco. Say it was all Stevie's fault, Bosco. _

_Say Stevie killed that biker like a good boy. _

That was what it took. Faith was right - it had to go _that_ far before he wised up. He'd ignored everything Faith had to say on the matter, missed every warning sign, and saw the light only when Cruz tried to frame a man for murder. Cutting corners in matters of protocol was one thing, but that willingness to step on innocent people (and for her own personal agenda, at that) was something else entirely. It came around full circle, right back to his brother; Stevie Nunez could just as easily have been Michael Boscorelli. That he also could have been _Lettie _never seemed to occur to Cruz. Stevie was somebody's son, perhaps somebody's brother, and Cruz couldn't see that at all. Bosco never could wrap his head around that one: that Cruz never once thought about how she'd feel if some other hellbent cop came along and did the same thing to her goddam meth-snorting sister.

Which had led him to an even colder thought: would Cruz hesitate to do something like that to Mikey, if Bosco wasn't around to stop her? Would she turn Mikey into her little scapegoat?

The answer seemed pretty obvious, didn't it?

So Cruz had turned out to be none of the things he'd thought she was. She'd turned out to be scum. Whaddaya know, Faith was right. Cruz had no qualms about hurting innocent people, and she would have thrown _him_ to the wolves the moment it suited her purpose. So he crawls back to Faith ... big hot 'n heavy cop-on-cop shootout follows ... ol' long, tall and ugly appears, Detective Schaeffer with his bag of happy surprises ... Faith quits ... Cruz escapes ... and so on and so forth, and as far as Bosco could see that brought things neatly up to date. Now here they all were.

Now here _he_ was, honestly worried about Maritza Cruz. Go figure.

Part of it was the guilt - he was at least partly responsible for where she had ended up. And there was also that increasing sense of history wanting to repeat itself - _Hobart, Part II_. It was getting easier and easier to think back to that day on the rooftop and imagine Cruz lying there instead of Glen, face-down with half her head blown off. He didn't want to see something like that happen again. He didn't want to see it happen to _her_. No matter what she'd done or what she might have been capable of doing, no matter what she'd done to _him_, Bosco had never hated her - certainly not in the same way Faith did - and he had no desire to see her hurt herself now. Herself, or anyone else.

And that was why he was going to talk to Aaron Noble.

According to Swersky's whacked-out theory, the writer was a potential target. There were others - Faith being one - who'd hurt Cruz in a far more direct way than Noble had, but Noble was the only person Bosco was comfortable talking to. All the other names on a hypothetical Maritza Cruz hit-list were people he didn't dare approach. Faith's door was closed and bolted forever, and he had no desire to stir up the wasps' nest there again anyway. Brent Schaeffer ... now that was just laughable, wasn't it? There you had a man Bosco never wanted to see again under _any_ circumstances. Ditto Christina Reyes. If Bosco were drowning and one of those two fuckers threw him a life-ring, he'd throw it back at them and hope the rope choked them in the bargain. Besides, he had no idea how to get in touch with either of them anyway, aside from actually going down to IAB headquarters and having them paged ... and walking into the heart of Schaeffer's home turf was not high on his agenda for this rainy Saturday afternoon.

That left Aaron Noble as the only other person directly involved in ending Cruz's career, and the only person out of that little group Bosco could still feel genuinely superior to. So he made a few quick phone-calls, following much the same path Cruz herself had the previous day, starting from the Melrose and tracking Noble here to the Bridgeview.

He might be able to get a fresh perspective on the matter of Cruz's escape. Did Swersky drop by to see Noble? If so, what did he say? What kind of security did he offer? Did he suggest any other theories on what Cruz might be up to? Et cetera, et cetera.

Of course, Bosco was _not_ so deluded that he couldn't see how completely pointless this was. In the end he was basically just dicking around in the shallow end of the pool, playing a kind of half-assed detective game with himself just to keep his morale up and his mind on something else. He really had no idea what he expected to get out of Noble, a worry which didn't amount to squat because the writer probably wouldn't even agree to talk to him. Bosco had no badge, hence no clout. Noble would have every right to brush him off, and being flicked away like a wet booger by such a lowlife was apt to feel pretty embarrassing.

In fact, if Bosco started thinking too hard about what he was doing here, the whole thing started to feel pretty embarrassing. It would be the police, the _real_ police, who would nab Cruz - not some fuck-up of an ex-cop with a guilty conscience. It was possible they'd gotten her already - Bosco hadn't turned on a TV since going to bed last night. And since Charlie's cartoons were the order of the day in Faith's apartment, that meant neither of them had any sense of the latest developments. It could all be _over_ by now, and Bosco was already starting to feel a bit like the little tyke who runs along behind the local beat cop with his day-glo water pistol and his glow-in-the-dark "Official Police Badge." Lil' Bosco wants to help! Lil' Bosco is playing detective! Lil' Bosco wants to prove he's still got the Right Stuff! How cute!

How sad!

He didn't care. He knew it wasn't really about proving he still had what it took, or about playing hero to Cruz before she could start another bloodbath. He _wanted_ to contribute, but he knew he wasn't in a position to do much of anything. And knowing that made it okay. This was strictly for himself. It was about Having Something To Do, something to keep him moving. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and a man with a mission is less likely to get all morose and sulky and start thinking about blowing his own stupid fucking head off.

And he supposed that at the very least, he could have the pleasure of insulting that slimeball writer to his face one last time.

The idea that what he was doing here at the Bridgeview really _could_ lead him directly to Cruz never once crossed his mind.


	17. Chapter 10, Part II

Chapter 10 Continued

II.

At a guess, Bosco would say that it was at least fifteen years since he'd last spared either Karen Tuttle or her favorite britcom a second thought, and yet as he crossed the lobby of the Bridgeview he couldn't get _Fawlty Towers_ out of his head.

The layout of the "reception area" didn't even remotely resemble that of the fictional hotel, but there was something about the place, something about the _ambiance_ that seemed to put you into a kinder and simpler frame of mind. A very _un_-New York frame of mind. Compared to the snazzy postmodern gleam of the Melrose, this place looked pretty backward, something the owners seemed to have purposely overstated. You were supposed to come in off the street and feel like you'd stepped through some kind of time warp, one that came out in some quaint little mid-century English town.

As little interest as Bosco had in interior design, he thought it worked; the place had a touch of subtle, nonthreatening class the bigger hotel couldn't match. The lobby was small, pleasantly stuffy, and preternaturally quiet. The predominate smells were lingering breakfast - coffee, toast, bacon - oiled wood, and air freshener. It was all a little too big to be called a Bed 'n Breakfast, but it was a cozy little country house all the same. It was almost as if the Bridgeview was designed not only to be an oasis in the New York rat-race, but also to evoke contempt for places like the Melrose - the bustling big-city hotels with their constant inflow and outflow of high-paying businesspeople and social bigshots. And of course that endless background symphony of ringing phones, cells, and pagers.

The only sound here was the lazy, wooden rhythm of a grandfather clock that sat just to the left of the staircase, a staircase that looked to be the only means of transportation between the hotel's three floors - there were no elevators here. You had to pump those God-given muscles up a winding, lushly carpeted set of stairs, and God only knew what the rooms were like. Like something out of a kid's storybook, probably. Cozy little Hobbit-holes.

These were not usual thoughts for Maurice Boscorelli, needless to say; there was a time not so long ago when he would have found about six different ways to call such observations _queer_. Now he just accepted them and was glad for them. Comparisons to old TV shows notwithstanding, the place just felt good, it _smelled_ good, and God knew he was entitled to a little pick-me-up right now. To hell with Aaron Noble - just soaking up this atmosphere was enough of a high to justify coming here. Shit, it was almost _zen_.

On the wall to his left was another framed photograph, this one a huge, breathtaking panoramic view of London's Tower Bridge. Underneath was another little plaque, this one containing a blurb about Iris and Tom Hendrickson's first hotel, the _original_ Bridgeview, located within spitting distance of Tower Bridge. So that, at least, explained the hotel's oddly out-of-place name; it was Iris and Tom's legacy to christen their places of business _Bridgeview_, regardless of whether or not the place was actually _located_ near a bridge. Which this one wasn't.

Directly ahead was the main desk, which was as large and imposing as the woman who was currently standing behind it. The top of the desk came almost to Bosco's upper-chest, and the clerk behind it seemed impossibly tall. Halfway to seven feet at a glance, and Bosco realized with some surprise that the woman was none other than Iris Hendrickson herself.

Only this Iris appeared to have aged about thirty years; it seemed the photo in the foyer was just a tad out of date. Gone was the long, frizzy dark hair - now as gray as a mule, Iris had cut most of it off and pulled what was left into a tight bun at the base of her skull. She was still tall and still slim, but where the Iris in the photograph looked like she'd be at home slinking down a modeling runway in a skimpy little Victoria's Secret number, this Iris looked stringy and tough and world-weary. A lot of her incredible height came from the fact that the floor behind the main desk was raised slightly, but a lot of it was still pure Iris. She might have been six-one, maybe even six-two barefoot, and the raised floor added a good four inches to that.

Equally intimidating was the massive ginger cat sitting next to her. It was a scruffy, ancient thing with a flat, pugnacious face and a red-and-white spotted bandana tied jauntily around its neck. It crouched on the end of the desk in what appeared to be a state of semi-sleep; every so often the eyes would open stealthily, apparently whenever it thought nobody was looking at it.

Iris may not have aged very gracefully in the years between the foyer photograph and now, but the sunny movie-star smile was the same. When she saw Bosco approach she looked up and flashed it at him, and he was not surprised to find himself returning it with equal feeling. You just sort of had to - she was one of those people with one of those smiles, and though she was far past her prime, Bosco was betting she'd broken a fair number of hearts before settling on lucky little Tom Hendrickson, he of the unibrow and bad comb-over.

She also didn't seem to take exception to his appearance, which Bosco knew was slowly slipping across the line between merely _disheveled_ and full-fledged _bum_.

"Hello!" she said brightly, crossing her arms on the oversized desk and leaning over it toward him. "Don't tell me, let me guess now" - she narrowed her eyes and pointed a playful finger at him - "I _know_ who you're here to see."

Bosco shrugged, a bit self-consciously. "Who?"

"_You're_ here to see Aaron Noble. Aren't you?"

Bosco's smile frayed a bit at the edges, but he kept it on. "Uh, yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I am." He laughed and shrugged again, and again it was a bit self-conscious. "How'd you - ?"

Iris waved impatiently. "Oh, you look like a writer, don't you? Or some such man of the world. This place has seen its share of scruffy intellectuals over the years, I'm afraid - too many for me not to know one when I see one. No offense intended." She broadened her smile into something that added, very clearly: _But I didn't need to tell you that, did I?_

Bosco shrugged a third time, and again he felt himself smiling back at her almost reflexively. Even if Iris _had_ meant offense, Bosco didn't think he would have been able to stay angry with her for very long. She might have made a pretty good cop - she'd be a natural with the velvet glove. Kind of like Faith. Send Iris into an interrogation room or out on a domestic disturbance call, get her to flash those teeth, and she'd smooth things over right quick.

_Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? _his Bosco-side(a.k.a. the angry midget) piped up irritably._ Eyes on the prize! _

"Now," Iris said softly. "Mr. Noble likes to keep a low profile, and we've already had a few fortune-hunters and autograph-seekers show up at the door. But I can tell you're not one of those. The gawkers, they always have that heady _starstruck_ look in their eyes, don't they? And they always look guilty. But you're here to offer some moral support. Am I right?"

Bosc nodded. "Right."

"I thought as much the moment I saw you. Several of Mr. Noble's contemporaries have already dropped in to see him since all that unpleasantness at the Melrose." She shook her head. "Nasty business, that."

"Yeah, nasty," Bosco heard himself say. This whole thing was started to feel very strange, very _Alice-in-Wonderland_-ish, and he didn't know why. Iris's manner, for one thing. And probably because it just felt so good here. The smell of the place, the look of it, the clock _tick-tock_ing away in the corner - it was almost hypnotic. It was _zen_. Bosco had reached _zen_ only an hour after dragging around as a miserable, self-pitying wreck. It probably wasn't healthy to go from one extreme to the other so fast. Probably made you a little loopy.

Hell with it - might as well enjoy the ride. That _was_ what he was really here for anyway, wasn't it?

"I'd also take from your appearance that the rain hasn't finished with us just yet," Iris went on, eyes sparkling. She was teasing him in a way that came very close to _flirting_, he was quite sure of that now, and Bosco found himself wishing - absurdly, and almost against his will - that Iris Hendrickson was about thirty years younger and single.

"No," he said. "No, it's still coming down pretty hard out there."

Iris nodded. Then, suddenly, she was all business, leaning back from the desk and looking down at him imperiously. "Now, then," she said briskly. "As for you, I would guess that you are a ... _hmmm_, now ..." The smile tried to peek through at the corners of her mouth again. "A _wildlife photographer_?"

Bosco blurted a laugh. "Uh, no, I'm -" he began, and then broke off suddenly, eyes widening.

He was bitterly amused - and utterly appalled - to realize how close he'd just come to identifying himself as _Officer Boscorelli, NYPD._

"I'm just a friend," he finished lamely. "We've ... uh ... I've known Noble ... uh ... _Aaron,_ for years. Since, uh, since I was in college. When he was teaching. I was ... uh ... in one of his classes."

_Riiiiight. That sounded _real_ convincing. Oh, you still got it, guy. Sharp as a tack._

Bosco shrugged inwardly. So he wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. So what? He was still about seventy percent hungover, and he wasn't here in a serious frame of mind.

And if Iris thought anything sounded suspicious, it didn't show. "Mr. Noble needs all the friends he can get right now," she said. Then she leaned over the desk again. "To tell you the truth, when he first came here, I thought him a little standoffish. A bit _stuck up_, you know. But then I realized what the poor man had just suffered through. Sounds to me like he was digging up some prime dirt on the New York Police, and some of the high mucky-mucks didn't much like it. He was at the center of something big, by the sound ... and look what almost happened to him for it. Like something out of a movie, isn't it? What was that policewoman's name? The one everyone's talking about? Maria Cruz?"

Bosco felt his mouth twitch. For no reason he could fathom his mind's eye presented him with the now-familiar image of Cruz, bloodied and kneeling in the middle of Noble's room, her left arm hanging from its pulverized shoulder like a broken tree branch.

He had _seen_ that. He'd been there, he'd seen it with his own eyes, and Iris Hendrickson here had no idea. No idea at all.

"Something like that, I think, yeah," he said, a trifle hoarsely.

On the desk next to Iris, the big ginger cat stirred. It stood up, stretched luxuriously, and yawned directly at Bosco, sending a current of rancid, fishy breath right into his face. He winced.

"I see you've noticed our permanent resident," Iris said dryly as the cat settled back into its previous state of suspended animation. "My husband insists on keeping him around, I don't know why. Some gobbledegook about 'lending the place character.' Tom calls him Captain Jack. After Captain Jack Aubrey, from Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin books. Mr. Noble's quite a fan of those stories, isn't he?"

Bosco nodded cautiously. He'd lied once about his relationship to Noble, and he wasn't keen on the idea of cranking out more to support the first one. Even if that meant nodding and agreeing with anything Iris said. He didn't feel very cunning at the moment, and he didn't want her to decide he was just a "fortune-hunter" after all. Not because it would blow any chance at talking to Noble but ...

... but ... well, he _liked_ Iris, and he didn't like lying to her. Lying had a way of coming around on you. Ask Faith Yokas - she'd tell you. Or ask Rose Boscorelli to recite her little bit of maternal wisdom - lies had a way of breeding lies.

"He _did_ get a kick out of our naming a cat after the main character," Iris went on. "I've heard they're making a movie out of the books. Starring Russell Crowe." She nodded at the cat, who was still feigning sleep. "_He_ certainly doesn't look much like Russell Crowe, does he?"

"No, he doesn't," Bosco said. And no, the cat did not look much like Russell Crowe. Bosco thought it looked more like Lieutenant Swersky, if it looked like anybody.

"He _is_ quite the charmer, isn't he?" Iris said. "Mr. Noble, I mean - not old Captain Jack! I've read all his books, and he was good enough to sign my _Blue Line Fever_ for me. I hated to ask ... you know, considering the circumstances, but I couldn't resist. And I'll tell you, I can't wait to read his next one."

Bosco smiled and nodded politely. Smiling and nodding politely seemed to be all he could do here. He knew that pretty soon he would have to cut in, bring Iris down out of the clouds and get to business, but he just couldn't seem to make his mouth work. He still felt strangely high. It was the hotel. That _un_-New York atmosphere. And Iris. She seemed to have mesmerized him. She was old enough to be his mother - hell, his _grandmother_, even - and yet he kept thinking of that picture in the foyer. Iris when she was tall, dark and gorgeous. He kept thinking of that blinding smile. The way she'd pegged his reason for being here the moment he walked in. And the smooth, breathy voice; Iris spoke in the soft, musical British accent Bosco (along with most North Americans) associated with culture and breeding.

Two words came at him out of some nether-region of his brain: _liquid silk_. That was what you'd call the sound of that accent. _Liquid silk_.

Bosco wondered - and not for the first time - if he might be going out of his mind.

"He's not here at the moment, I'm afraid," Iris said.

Bosco blinked stupidly, opened his mouth to ask her if she could please repeat herself, and then closed it when he realized that she'd done it again; for the second time in almost as many minutes, Iris Hendrickson had answered a question before he'd even asked it.

He recovered a bit faster this time. "Uh ... uh, I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?"

"Not a clue, I'm sorry to say. I'm not even sure when he left. Last night sometime, I think. He's been here ... four ... no, _five_ days now. Goes out every night. Enjoys dancing, doesn't he?"

Bosco dearly wanted to tell her that he had no idea what the dumb bastard enjoyed and what he didn't, and didn't care to know. But he had his lie to protect. His _cover-story_. He was supposed to be one of Noble's pals. One of his scruffy-intellectual drinking buddies. "Yeah, he does," Bosco said reluctantly. He was still nervous about taking it too far; as a result his voice had become inflectionless, dead. "Usually."

"Have you tried reaching him on his mobile?"

"His what?"

Iris rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "I'm sorry. His mobile _phone_ is what I mean. His _cell._"

"Uh, no. No, I think he must have turned it off."

"I'm not surprised," Iris said. Then she lowered her voice and gave him a conspiratorial wink. "He hasn't come back here yet. And I've been on this desk since six o'clock sharp this morning. I'd guess that he's eating breakfast at someone _else's_ table." She gave him an appraising look and another impish smile. "I'm sure you know how it is."

"Yeah," Bosco said robotically. "I know how it is."

Iris peered at him. "I say, are you all right? You look a little pallid."

_I say. She actually started a sentence with _I say_. She'll be calling me _old chap_ next. _

_God, is this really where I am? Hanging around a hotel getting flirty with a woman twice my age just so I don't have to go back outside and face my fucking troubles?_

"Never better," Bosco said in a more natural tone. Fun though it may have been - lies and all - it was definitely time to wrap things up and move on. He'd already lost all interest in talking to Noble; the little booster shot he'd gotten from the hotel was more than worth the trip. Much later, when he would have every reason to wish he'd never come within a mile the Bridgeview, Bosco would try to call up the hotel, Iris and her liquid silk accent, even her big, filthy cat, and clutch at them, draw comfort from them, remember them as the only bright spots in a terrible week that still had one or two very nasty surprises in store for him.

He started to turn away from the desk. "Look, forget it. It's not important anyway, I'll just -"

Iris held up her hand and shook her head emphatically. "No no no. Just hold your horses, now. I was away most of the day yesterday, and my husband was working the desk last night. He could tell you more. You never know - maybe Mr. Noble told him when he'd be back."

And before Bosco could tell her not to bother, Iris had turned and ducked back into what he assumed was the manager's office.

He sighed.

_Well, you started this, didn't you? _the angry little bastard in his head said sullenly. _You needed something to do to kill time. Time's being killed right now, isn't it?_

He checked his watch. Yes, time was being killed. Five minutes had died thus far, although it felt like he'd been in here longer. In any case it didn't matter. He turned and leaned wearily up against the desk, glancing around at the Bridgeview's lobby, eyes skimming over it all again: clock, Tower Bridge photo, spiral staircase, a sandwich board next to the dining room with a list of prices. Apparently, ordering a baked potato here would set you back seventeen bucks. According to the sign, they were "world-renowned" - Bosco guessed that for seventeen bucks a pop, they'd damn well better be. For that much, they'd better add about three inches to your dick.

It did remind him of something else, though - it was at least twenty-four hours since he'd eaten anything halfway decent. The prices here might be ridiculous, but the smell - the coffee, toast and bacon aspect of it, anyway - was making his stomach rumble. Since leaving his mother's place his diet had consisted mostly of pretzels, snack-sized bags of Doritos, and a microwaved cup of instant noodles that tasted more like the cardboard container than the "creamy cheddar" the label promised.

So there you had it - he'd found something else to do on this rainy Saturday. Go somewhere and top up the tank. It was 10:21 A.M. Somewhere in the city, Maritza Cruz was leaning up against an anonymous concrete wall in an anonymous neighborhood, writhing in the grip of a hellish fit of projectile vomiting while Bosco stood in the lobby of the Bridgeview Hotel, thinking he could go for the full round of breakfast - bacon, eggs and all. He thought he might be able to stretch the meal out to noon or so, and he was just starting to run down a list of possible places to grab a bite when Captain Jack attacked him.

At first Bosco wasn't completely sure what was happening. Something hit him on the back of the neck, followed immediately by a low, virulent hiss, which was _then_ followed by a guttural, eerily humanlike warbling: "_aaaoow-wow-wow_." Bosco had never had much to do with cats, but he recognized it as the kind of warning moan that said the first little bat was just a warning shot, and if he didn't back down, the next one would take off most of his face.

Bosco wheeled around angrily. He wasn't afraid of the cat, but he _was_ afraid of what he was going to find when he took his jacket off - the swipe hadn't caught any skin, but he _had_ felt a very distinct ripping sensation at his collar.

"You little jagoff," Bosco said under his breath.

Jack merely looked back at him with an expression of lazy, murderous feline contempt. _Insulting cats now, are you?_ that look said. _My, my, you really _are_ cracking up, aren't you?_

The look made Bosco feel foolish, and the fact that a cat could make him feel foolish made him feel even more foolish. So it was back to the vicious circles and paradoxes again.

_That_ made him angrier.

"If I find one mark on this jacket," he said quietly, "I'm gonna come back here and have your fat ass stuffed and mounted."

Jack responded by hunkering down on the desk again and folding his front paws in front of him in another oddly humanlike gesture, this one of defiance: _I live here, asswipe. You don't. So do your worst._

Bosco was just getting ready to gently and discreetly shove the cat off the desk when Iris came back out of the office, her husband in tow.

Tom Hendrickson didn't appear to have changed as much as his wife in the years between the foyer photograph and now; his hair was gray and had thinned a bit more at the edges, but that was it. Beyond that he was the same stout little dude with the fishy lips, and he still had enough hair to keep the bad comb-over going. There was only one difference: Bosco didn't think he was quite as short as he appeared in the picture. Not much taller than himself, really. It was Iris. Iris and her height. She tended to throw things out of perspective.

"This," Iris said, gesturing at Bosco, "is a friend of Mr. Noble's. Mr. ..." She laughed. "Ah! I don't even know your name!"

"Boscorelli," he said. This time he caught the _Officer_ before it could escape, but realized half a second later that he might have made a blunder just by telling them his name. _Boscorelli_ was low on the list of disgraced Anti-Crime cops, but he was there all the same.

But neither Bridgeview owner seemed to recognize it. Tom grinned and stuck his hand out over the desk. "How'd you do?"

"Good, I'm good," Bosco said hastily as they shook. "Look, really, this isn't all that important, and I don't want to waste anybody's time - "

Tom waved at the air. "Oh, no trouble, no trouble at all." To Bosco his accent sounded cruder, less cultured than Iris's. _Cockney_, maybe. So it was a cross-class relationship, then. "You're one of Mr. Noble's friends, now, are you?"

"Yeah," Bosco said. He was suddenly very bored of this whole repetitive song and dance; the conversation was running in circles, and now that Tom was here the spell of the Bridgeview (and Iris) was entirely broken. It was long past time to get this over with and leave. "But you know, it's no big deal if he's not around. I can come back."

"He left last night, around about ..." - Tom's face scrunched up - "... around about half-past nine, I'd say. Probably headed down to the Crimson Lion. Your lot seem to really favor that place, don't you? Writers and such, I mean. Michael Crichton stayed here a few years back, you know, and I think he was a patron of the Lion, too. Place is an intellectual Mecca for them, I take it?"

Bosco offered a noncommittal nod.

"I was just telling Mr. Boscorelli that Mr. Noble didn't come back this morning," Iris said slyly. "Wink wink. Nudge nudge."

One half of Tom's unibrow lifted slightly. "Is that your oh-so-subtle way of saying he's got himself a little company?"

"It is, as a matter of fact," Iris said, and winked openly at Bosco. "Mr. Boscorelli took my meaning right away."

Tom laughed. "I'm afraid you might be mistaken there, my dear. You missed the fireworks yesterday afternoon."

"Fireworks?"

"Mr. Noble _had_ a lady-friend," Tom said. "She dropped by yesterday afternoon and they had a big row right here in the lobby. She was a paramedic. Came right in here in full uniform. Parked the ambulance outside, came in here, and proceeded to read our Mr. Noble the Riot Act."

Iris looked scandalized. "No!"

"Yes. Called him everything but white. Said he was a big phony. A drug addict. A criminal. Then she said she never wanted to set eyes on him again, and never to call her." Tom turned to Bosco. "I imagine she was listening to all that rubbish about him on the news, and reached her own conclusions. All of these supposed connections to motorcycle gangs and drugs." He added hastily: "I don't believe any of it, myself."

But Bosco couldn't have cared less if Tom believed Noble snorted pure heroin and had sex with pigs to the tune of _God Save the Queen_. He was intrigued by that one word - _paramedic_.

He looked up at Tom with a faint smile. "Probably didn't catch her name, huh?"

"Mr. Noble's former lady-friend? I did, as a matter of fact. He and I had a little chat about it afterwards - I think he was a bit embarrassed about the whole mess and wanted to smooth things over. Her name was Zamboni. Or Zamfredo." Tom slapped his forehead. "_Damn_. It was Zam-_something_, anyway. Kim Zam-something."

Now it was Bosco's turn to raise the eyebrow. "Zambrano?"

Tom snapped his fingers. "Yeah! Yeah, right, that was it! Thought I'd be sure to remember that. I can't seem to remember anything for more than five minutes anymore."

"Early-onset senility," Iris said sweetly, brushing a lock of Tom's thinning hair away from his bald head and kissing the spot. "Right, dearest?"

"Right," Tom said dryly. He looked at Bosco. "So you know her, then? This fiery Ms. Zambrano?"

"Uh ... only ... uh, only through Aaron," Bosco said absently. It was an interesting little coincidence, but ultimately of no consequence to him. So Kim Zambrano had been seeing Noble. Which probably meant she'd been the woman on the balcony that day he and Cruz dropped in to remind the writer of his obligations. Life could be funny sometimes.

"I think she might even have come back to have another go at him last night," Tom said.

Bosco looked up. "What?"

"There was quite a lot of shouting coming from the parking lot just after he left." Tom grinned. "The devilish part of me likes to think it was Ms. Zambrano, back for Round Two."

"Poor man," Iris said. "Considering what he went through, I think the woman could have been a little more understanding." She gave Bosco another wink. "After all, you need infinite patience when dealing with men."

Tom chuckled. "I'll hold you to that the next time you start complaining about poor old Captain Jack," he said. At the same time he put a hand under the Captain's hairy ass and casually slid him across the desk, freeing up a ledger the cat had been lying right on top of. Jack made that mournful, just slightly creepy caterwauling noise again and tried to settle himself back again.

Iris gave the cat's hindquarters her own little nudge. "Get off!"

"Oh, leave him be," Tom said, in the tone of a man who has spoiled his children, knows it, and has resigned himself to it. "He might as well lie there, if he likes it so much."

Iris leaned down and spoke directly into the cat's ear: "Dirty thing."

Something just slightly bizarre happened; the cat appeared to take offense. Being threatened with bodily harm couldn't move him, being rudely shoved aside couldn't move him, but being called a "dirty thing" was apparently too much for the Captain's sensibilities. He stood up (pausing to take another long, kingly stretch) and then jumped to the floor. It was a fairly long drop for such a big and obviously over-the-hill cat, but old Jack touched down with the unconscious grace of a ballerina and sauntered away towards the office.

He fired a dark (and rather Swersky-ish) glance over his shoulder at Bosco as he went.

Bosco looked up at Tom and opened his mouth to ask a question; something the little man had said a moment ago had caught his interest.

But Iris cut in before he could utter a word. "I'd better not see the old bugger in the dining room again, Tom," she said ominously, rummaging for something behind the desk. "I found him there last night before I came to bed, sitting in the middle of Table Three like a little emperor. We don't need the health department down here sniffing around." She looked up at Bosco. "I'm sorry, Mr. Boscorelli. It's a madhouse here, isn't it?"

Bosco, now a little less than seven minutes away from a decision that would change the course of his day and possibly the rest of his life, thought to tell Iris that a place as sleepy as the Bridgeview didn't exactly qualify for the label of "madhouse." But he kept his mouth shut. In a way these two _were_ sort of like something out of one of Karen Tuttle's beloved British sitcoms. Not _Fawlty Towers_, maybe, but something close. They were a pair of characters ... and he was betting it wasn't exactly an accident, either. More likely affectation. Quirky owners with exotic accents made for more atmosphere. Which in the end probably translated into more positive word-of-mouth reviews, more guests, and more money.

Now, what about the question? He'd been meaning to ask Tom a question just before Iris interrupted and threw him off track. So what was it?

He couldn't remember. Probably wasn't very important.

"It's all so very unfortunate for Mr. Noble," Iris said, still foraging for something behind the desk. "First that Maria Cruz person tries to murder him in his hotel room, and then this Ms. Zambrano emasculates him for all the world to see."

"_Maritza_, dear," Tom said gently. "I believe the woman's name was _Maritza_, not _Maria_. World of difference."

"Was it now?" Iris said, at last drawing a fat stack of papers from underneath the desk. "Maritza? Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes," Tom sighed. "But you don't _say_ it like that, sweetness. You don't say Mare-IT-za. You say Mare-EET-za."

"I believe you're mistaken," Iris said gently.

"No, actually, I don't believe I am."

"I'm quite sure the name _is_ pronounced Mare-IT-za, Tom, not Mare-EET-za," Iris said, now using a strained, _don't-embarrass-yourself-you-twit_ tone that made Bosco smile, in spite of the fact that the subject of Cruz still made him distinctly uncomfortable. Particularly when it was raised by two perfect strangers, each utterly unaware that one of the heaviest players in the whole bloody drama was standing right in front of them.

Yes, indeed - life could be funny sometimes. Life could be oh-so fucking strange.

"Mare-IT-za sounds so crude!" Tom cried. "So ... _provincial_! You say it with a nice little Spanish flare! Try it with me now: MARE - as in female horse. EET - as in, what you do when you stuff food in your mouth. ZA - as in ... as in ZAP. I don't know. You're supposed to r-r-r-roll the _R_, too. Mar-r-r-r_eet_za!"

"Do you remember when we were living in the apartment in Chicago?" Iris said pleasantly, thumbing through the forms she was holding with fidgety impatience. "Do you remember the nice woman who used to live two doors over? The one who used to walk the fat little Daschund every morning? Her name was Maritza Vasquez. She was Puerto Rican, as Spanish as you could want, and she used to pronounce her name Mare-IT-za."

Tom glanced at his wife and made absolutely sure she was occupied with her stack of forms. Then he turned to Bosco and rolled his eyes comically, a perfect display of the long-suffering, _marriage-is-hell_-believing, whipped-silly husband.

Never breaking Bosco's gaze, he said: "I'll defer to your wisdom, dearest. _This _time."

Iris grunted. "Well, however she says her name, it's a mystery to me how a woman like that could turn out to be a corrupt police officer. Such a pretty young thing. Such pretty eyes. And here they're saying she tried to murder Mr. Noble!"

"Speculation, dear, speculation," Tom muttered. "I don't believe I heard anyone say any such thing. I believe it was something to do with drugs. This Cruz person is probably a doper herself, and Mr. Noble was threatening to expose her. I hear a lot of these bad apples in the police are dopers."

"Nothing would surprise me, with the world being what it is today," Iris said. "But _if_ she wanted to murder him, I can only ask _why_? Why would she take it into her head to do that?" Iris looked helplessly at Bosco. "Just because he wanted to make sure the police are honest? Do you really kill a man over that?"

Bosco only shrugged wearily, thinking of how grimly funny this really was. Neither Tom nor Iris had recognized his name, and while that should probably come as a relief, he found himself giddily tempted to tell them anyway. Bask proudly in his new celebrity. He thought of how easy it would be to satisfy their curiosity right now, right on this very spot; how easy it would be to just tell them who he really was and follow it up with the whole sorry tale, so when they watched the news tonight they wouldn't have to guess at what was truth and what was half-truth and what was a lie. They'd have one up on almost everybody else in New York. Maybe they'd like that.

Shit, maybe they'd even ask him for an autograph.

He was, for a few seconds at least, very tempted.

Instead he kept quiet, allowing himself to marvel at Iris's use of the phrase "pretty young thing." He thought of the picture of Cruz on the local news last night: sneering mouth, wild eyes, smears of blood like war paint on her cheeks and forehead ... and two shrouded corpses in the background just to make the whole incriminating picture complete. Trial by Media. Good evening, New York - say hello to Mad-Dog Cruz, frozen mid-snarl in glorious black-and-white. Devil-horn and little swastika cartoons optional.

Iris Hendrickson had obviously seen a different picture of Cruz. And it was obviously time to leave the Bridgeview. For _real_ this time - turn one-eighty degrees and boogie on out of here. Any magic that had been in the air when he first came in was gone now, and the Bridgeview was becoming a stuffy, smelly, slightly claustrophobic place with a front desk that seemed to be manned by two bickering britcom rejects.

But there was still something bugging him. Something about Tom.

"Well," Bosco said, a bit too hastily. "It was ... uh ... it was good meeting you both, and it's nice of you to want to help, but I ... you know, I can't stick around."

"So long, then," Tom said amiably. "We'll tell Mr. Noble you were looking for him. Your name again ... it was Boss ... Bossca - ?"

"Boscorelli."

"Did you want to leave your number?" Iris said. "One of us could give you a ring when he gets back in. Or better yet we'll just have him call you."

Bosco shook his head. "Nah, forget it. I'll ... I'm sure I'll see him around."

"Maybe not as soon as you'd think," Tom said wryly. "If my dear wife is right about him finding someone to share a bedroll with. But if you ask me, I think he's in the doghouse at the moment. Ms. Zambrano really let him have it."

"It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Boscorelli," Iris said, giving him the star-studded smile for the last time. She paused, then added: "You know, I can't help but feel there's something familiar about that name. Are you sure you haven't dropped in to see Mr. Noble already?"

Bosco's throat tightened up. So Iris (and most likely Tom as well) _had_ heard his name somewhere. She just hadn't made the connection yet.

He would rather she didn't until he was well clear of the hotel.

"No. No, I haven't," he said, starting across the lobby.

Iris shrugged. "Perhaps I heard him mention you at some point." She winked. "You take care of yourself now, Mr. Boscorelli."

Bosco nodded, already halfway to the door. In that moment he looked very much like Faith Yokas on the day she'd made her abortive attempt to go back to work - slinking along, trying not to look like he was in too much of a hurry. Trying not to look _guilty_.

And there was a vicious, petty little part of his mind (his _Bosco-side_) that kept insisting that pretty soon - _any minute now_, in fact - the truth would click home and one of them would challenge him. Tom perhaps, in that lower-class Cockney-sounding accent of his. _Oy! _Tom would shout (for that would be the cry of exclamation somebody like Tom would use). _I recognize you now! You're one of those crooked cops! One of Mare-EET-za Cruz's gang!_

Christ, why didn't he just tell them the truth about who he was in the first place? Why that cornball shit about being one of Noble's pals? He should have just had it out in the air and over with. _My name's Maurice Boscorelli, I'm an ex-cop, and I want to ask Mr. Noble a few questions. You see, I almost got him killed the other day, and now a one-armed crazy woman might be gunning for him. Mad-Dog Mare-EET-za herself, in fact, armed and dangerous once again._

But Tom and Iris had already said their goodbyes and had dismissed him entirely; the two of them were now conversing with each other. They were talking about the "row" (pronounced British-style to rhyme with "wow") between Kim and Noble. Tom seemed to be teasing Iris about having missed the big showdown, while he had been treated to front-row seats. Iris, immersed in the big stack of papers she'd pulled out of the desk, was responding with a series of indifferent noises, absent little _mmm-hmm_'s and _ah_'s.

To Bosco, who had already reached the big doors that led into the foyer, the conversation was already growing dim and meaningless.

_A reporter!_ his brain gibbered. _Should've told them you were a reporter, here to interview Noble about his brush with Mad-Dog Cruz!_

Bosco hit the doors with a grunt and pushed on through into the little foyer, glancing one last time at the photograph of the much younger Hendrickson couple. Tom grinning his liver-lipped grin, Iris with her arm thrown casually around his slouched shoulders. Beauty and the Beast. Sigourney Weaver and the Alien. The Odd Couple.

Christ, though, the woman really _did_ look fine back then. Bosco allowed himself one last glance, because he was finished here and he'd probably never be back. He was finished here and he'd gotten what he wanted. He'd gotten _more_ than what he'd wanted: he'd gotten a little perspective on his life. An escape from his troubles. A little _breather_. Iris and Tom and their hotel had nothing to do with anything going on with him - they were something entirely _irrelevant_ to what was going on with him, and in the end that was what he'd been after. He'd wanted _Something To Do_, somebody to talk to who didn't know him or what he'd done or how he'd been branded.

And what could be more therapeutic than that? In your _face_, Brian O'Malley.

There _was_ something still bothering him about Tom, though. Important or not, he'd never gotten to ask his question. Whatever it had been.

In the end, Bosco would find the answer for himself.

* * *

Everything that happened to Maurice Boscorelli after he left the Bridgeview Hotel might never have happened at all if the scratch had been on the passenger side of his car.

He'd keep coming back to that in the weeks ahead. Again and again, that would be what he'd keep thinking about on the many sleepless nights he had waiting for him, the sleepless nights when he would think back to how the day had started - Faith and Iris and Tom and the Bridgeview Hotel - and how he possibly could have gone from that to where he'd ended up, sitting in the back of an ambulance in front of a dilapidated house in a bad neighborhood on the other side of the city. With blood on his hands.

Was it going to Faith's first thing that morning? Was it going to the Bridgeview? Or was it the scratch on the door of his car?

Who knew?

Life could be funny sometimes.


	18. Chapter 10, Part III

Chapter 10 Continued

III.

He left the hotel and stepped back out into the downpour, and when he did he felt his life immediately start trying to fold itself around him again. So much for self-administered therapy. So much for the Bridgeview's magic bullet. His feet hit the sidewalk and suddenly he was slipping right back towards melancholy. Thinking about the mistakes. Thinking about his job. Thinking about Ma.

Thinking about _Faith_.

It occurred to him just how funny the whole Bridgeview thing would have been. He could imagine it as a legitimate call: the two of them roll up to the hotel in an RMP to ask Aaron Noble a few questions about Cruz. They go inside, where Bosco immediately starts getting the warm-fuzzies over the atmosphere. The _ambiance_. He gets thinking about high school and old girlfriends. About _Fawlty Towers_ and how the rooms are probably like cozy little Hobbit-holes. Then he develops an instant crush on one of the managers, a woman who looks old enough to be his grandmother. _Then_ he's attacked by an elderly cat, to which he responds by threatening it with death and taxidermy. And then you had Iris and Tom's floor show, gossiping about the media fiasco over Cruz and arguing over the proper pronunciation of her given name.

He could imagine Faith standing off to one side, getting a big kick out of the whole business and vowing to herself never to let him live it down. _Any_ of it. Faith would've teased him with the Bridgeview throughout their lunch break, the rest of the shift, the rest of the week, and quite possibly on select special occasions throughout the rest of their careers.

And he could imagine the conversation:

_Faith, voice dripping with sarcastic nonchalance: "It's like the place had this _effect_ on you, Bos. I should take you there more often. You know I always love being reminded that you have a softer side."_

_Bosco, a tad sullenly: "It was a nice place. That's all I'm saying."_

_Faith, grinning as an idea suddenly strikes her: "You know what it was like? _The Shining_. The Mr. Rogers version of _the Shining_. Sunshine and lollipops instead of ax-murder and rivers of blood from the elevators. Very cute. Except for the whole yelling at the cat thing."_

_Bosco: "Yeah, well, the little son of a bitch ripped my jacket."_

_Faith, cackling: "I thought you were gonna piss yourself! You should've seen the look on your face; 'I'm gonna come back here and have your ass stuffed and mounted.' Priceless, Bos, priceless."_

_Bosco: "It attacked me, Faith!"_

_Faith: "You want to go back and charge him with assaulting a police officer? 'Cause I'll tell you right now, _you_ can be the one who fingerprints him."_

_Bosco, still sullen: "It ... it _startled_ me. That's all."_

_Faith: "Awww, did the big bad puddy-tat scare you? Did he put a little scratchy-watchy on your jacket? Come here and let Faith kiss 'm all better."_

_Bosco: "Ought to call Animal Control. _That's_ what we should do. Fucking thing could have rabies."_

_Faith: "Yeah, I'd love to sit down and watch you get twenty needles in the stomach."_

_Bosco: "What?"_

_Faith: "Rabies shots. It's like, a bunch of needles right in the stomach, isn't it?"_

_Bosco (uneasy, pretending not to be): "Are you serious?"_

_Faith: "Shit, I don't know! You're fine anyway, Bosco! Just forget it. Forget the stupid cat. And you can forget about Iris, too - she's way out of your league."_

_Bosco: "_Excuse_ me?"_

_Faith: "She's way too fast for you, trust me. Ol' Iris there? She's a wild one. You could never handle her, Bosco. Why, I bet she could bake a tray of muffins and sew up the rip in your jacket _at the same time

_Bosco, exasperated: "Oh, where are you _getting_ this? Huh?"_

_Faith, laughing again: "Bosco, you were getting all goo-goo-eyed over a married woman twice your age! You think I couldn't _see_ that? I was standing right there!"_

_Bosco: "Whatever. Whatever."_

_Faith: "Freud would have made a fortune on you. And wait till I tell Rose. What's she gonna think about her son dating an older woman? An older, _married_ woman? Here's to you, Mrs. Hendrickson!"_

And on like that.

And on like that.

He could hear it. He could hear it all, he could hear _her_ voice. He could _see_ it. He could hear it all and see it all, and he wanted it back. It made his heart hurt and he wanted it all _back_. He wanted _her_ back. He wanted to be Five-Five David again.

_Crybaby, crybaby. Here we are again, tripping on self-pity. Let's see, you've been out on the street for ... what? All of ten seconds? And you're back on the horse already. Impressive. Didn't miss a trick, didja?_

Bosco shrugged inwardly. No self-pity here - not this time, anyway. And while the subject was open, he had to admit he was getting as sick of the term itself as he was of feeling that way - those two words, hyphenated and used in conjunction with each other. _Self-pity_. Just saying it _sounded_ stupid.

This was just honest grief. Honest, _healthy_ grief, no more than that. He was done sucking his thumb - the Bridgeview had killed it out of him. The only direction he could move in now was forward.

And at the moment that meant moving in the direction of something to eat. He was still hungry, and hungry was good. Hungry meant you were healthy. Hungry meant you were _alive_. And after _that_ ...

After that he might drop in on Brian O'Malley.

No, really - he would. Or at least think about it.

Bosco pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck (he _would_ have to check it later on to see if Captain Jack had left any rips or tears) and stopped at the curb to wait for the traffic to thin. The rain was still coming down. Maybe that was why he couldn't shake the bad shit off - just a simple case of the rainy-day blues. The downpour hadn't lost any of its power since it started yesterday afternoon, and from what few weather reports he'd managed to catch (in between chasing the Anti-Crime scandal from channel to channel), it looked like New York City and the surrounding area were in for a royal pounding over the next couple of days.

He hurried across the street towards his car.

He was thinking about McDonald's when he saw it. McDonald's and Egg McMuffins. He was thinking that it had been years since he'd eaten one of the hideous things, and he was thinking maybe they'd improved in the meantime, and then he saw the scratch.

It was about two-and-a-half feet long and ran most of the length of the driver's side door, crossing over onto the front fender in the last inch or so. It was deep and very nasty. Very _noticeable_. The worst of the damage was at the halfway mark, where the vandal might have put a little extra push into it just to make sure the job was done properly.

Bosco stood looking at it for what seemed a long time. He wasn't angry. He knew that a week ago he would have been; a week ago he would have been _furious_. A week ago he would have gone straight to Defcon-Fucking-_Five_. A week ago he would have been ready to turn the city upside down and inside out to find the jagoff responsible for keying his fucking car, his _Mustang_, and when he _found_ the jagoff, the jagoff would have the distinction of being the first man on Earth to be successfully castrated with a car key.

Because a week ago this would have seemed important.

Right now, however, Bosco only found it slightly confusing. It was odd that the scratch was on the _driver's side_ door, because that was the side facing out into the street. The asshole would have had to step off the sidewalk and go around the car in order to key the driver's side, when it would have been far easier - and safer - to just casually reach out and make the scratch on the passenger's side as he (or _she_, Bosco supposed it could have been a woman, maybe even an ex-girlfriend, Tori or Nicole or even Karen Tuttle ... as if Karen could have any idea the car was his) walked along the sidewalk.

Bosco reached out and touched the scratch with his right hand. Gently, with the reverent tenderness of a man stroking his wife's brow as she slept. His fingers came back with little flakes of blue paint on them. Strange. You'd think the paint shavings would have been washed away by the rain, and yet there they were. He looked back at the long, silvery line of the scratch; not only was the scar deepest and ugliest near its center, it dipped and rose in a bit of an S-curve, as if the jagoff had been trying to put a little artistic flair into it. The result looked like a crooked smile.

Bosco looked at the paint-flecks on his fingertips again. That was blood, right there - the blood of his beloved Mustang.

A horn blared behind him, followed by an obscenity of uniquely New York construction and wit. The exact wording was lost in the rain, although it seemed to suggest that Bosco had come into the world as a result of forbidden love between his mother and a farm animal from the low end of the food chain.

Translation: _excuse me, sir, but you appear to be standing in the middle of a fairly busy street. It might be wise to move to a safer location before someone flattens your sorry ass_.

Bosco skittered around the front of his mutilated car and hopped up on the sidewalk.

He was now less than ten feet and roughly thirty seconds away from his fate.

The car looked okay from this side. He looked at the passenger-side door, the door he probably wouldn't have looked at otherwise; if the scratch had been on that side, he wouldn't have seen it. He would have just gotten in and driven away. He would have gotten his breakfast, maybe at McDonald's or maybe someplace else. He might have even followed through and gone to see Brian O'Malley. But he wouldn't have noticed the scratch until the end of the day. Maybe not even then.

But the passenger door was clean.

So it wasn't an impulsive act, then. Somebody had made a little effort here. The guy (or girl) had strutted out onto the busy street and keyed the other side, just so Bosco would be sure to notice. The asshole had actually put some _thought_ into it.

An act of premeditated assault on a defenseless classic muscle car.

Bosco began to laugh.

It caught him almost by surprise, starting silent and breathless low in his chest, then rose like an air bubble, and suddenly he was standing in the downpour almost doubled over, shaking his head from side to side like a man saying _no, no, stop, you're killing me here_! And it _was_ killing him. Because this was the last straw, the icing on the cake, the cherry on the whole big shit-sundae, and it was pretty tame, pretty lame, pretty ho-hum compared to everything else. He loses his career, his pension, his friends, becomes an IAB rat, and breaks his Ma's heart all in one week ... and _this_ is the Grand Finale? This was supposed to be the kicker? A scratch? It was stupid. It was all stupid and it wasn't even funny - not funny like his little sortie into the Bridgeview Hotel - but he laughed anyway, because right now it was either laugh or go crazy. He backed away from his car (a splash of bright color in all this grayness, gray streets and gray buildings and gray skies) and plopped down on a nearby public bench. His ass soaked through instantly and this made him laugh harder. He kept laughing, because it felt good, _he_ felt good, the _rain_ felt good. His eye caught a flash of color on the ground - another flash of color in all this grayness - and then skipped back to his car again.

A scratch. His car had been defaced by some subnormal fuckhead who just happened to be passing and had a key in his hand that wasn't being put to any use. After everything else, God sees fit to make _that_ the big topper.

He laughed for almost two full minutes, unaware that his fate had already found him and was now sitting about three inches from his left foot. He laughed until at last it began to taper off, the wild gusts shortening into little chuckles that settled into a low, pleasant chuffing. The spell passed, leaving a nice, warm tingling up through his chest. He looked at the Bridgeview again, then at his car, and then down at that spot on the ground again. That other little flash of color.

Bosco's smile faded. The last of his laughter died abruptly.

Maritza Cruz was looking up at him from the ground.

For a moment he couldn't do anything, couldn't move or breathe or look at anything but that little flash of color on the ground next to his left foot. His heart, already beating fast from his little fit, began to thud heavily, almost painfully in his chest.

He reached down, very slowly, and then immediately drew his hand back, as if from a hot stove. He knew what he was seeing, of course; the photograph was not so badly damaged that he couldn't see what it showed, but its presence here (not only in this _place_ but right at this _moment_) was so strange, so utterly _impossible_ that he almost couldn't bring himself to touch it. Later he would realize it was because he was afraid it didn't actually exist; he was afraid he was experiencing his first bona-fide _hallucination_. That when he reached down to pick it up his fingers would close on nothing but air, and that would confirm once and for all what he'd often suspected these last few days - that he had lost it. Completely.

But it was there, solid and perfectly real, and he was able to pinch the corner of the photo between his thumb and forefinger (he could still see flecks of blue paint under his nails) and pick it up.

It was unmistakable. Ragged and badly damaged but unmistakable, because it was a picture he had seen before, in Maritza Cruz's apartment. Less than five minutes before they were rolling around on the floor peeling each others' clothes off, as it happened.

_(This was taken on a ski trip three years ago_ _... three years ... that's all it took to eat her up)_.

"Jesus Christ," Bosco whispered. He was unaware that his free hand had crept up to his mouth in an old woman's stage-show gesture of horror. It was shaking slightly.

She was here.

Cruz had been _sitting right here_.

A rush of dizzy unreality washed over him. His head rolled back bonelessly on his neck, leaving him staring helplessly at the Bridgeview. The expression on his face was that of a man who has just discovered both his hands have been chopped off in some wickedly quick and precise piece of industrial machinery.

"No," he said in a clear and perfectly conversational voice. He chuckled again to try to reinforce this little statement of denial, but there wasn't anything remotely genuine in it. "Oh, no. No way."

And yet when he looked down again there it was, the truth staring right up at him. Cruz had been here. She'd come here to kill Noble, she'd sat out here in this downpour - _right where he was sitting now_ - staking the place out, waiting for the writer to come out so she could murder him.

Except that didn't make any sense. If Cruz had come here to kill him, she'd have shot him dead in the parking lot. Or she'd have snuck up on him while he was sitting in his car, and today the Bridgeview Hotel would be famous for more than its baked potatoes, the latest chapter in the increasingly sensational Anti-Crime story. _Good evening, New York - Mad-Dog Cruz has taken her first victim. We go live to the scene._

Bosco's eyes kept trying to creep upwards, trying to fix themselves back onto the hotel across the street and stay there. The cute little hotel, after all, was so much more _sane_ than what he was holding in his hand.

He forced himself to look at the photo again.

Letitia Cruz was grinning broadly. It was a smile that said God was in His Heaven and everything was right with the world. That was the addict. The addict never saw themselves as a problem, as a burden, a black sheep or disappointment or anything else even remotely negative. The addict was sick, and the sick often become petulant and demanding. The addict expects you to be there for them because that is your duty. The addict expects big brother or big sister or mommy or daddy to come along and wipe the shit off their rumps and kiss the all the boo-boos away ... but they'll bite and scratch and whine as you do it. Bosco could look at the other side of the picture and read this in Maritza's eyes. In Maritza's _smile_, which wasn't even half the size of her sister's. The smile that said: _Yes, I know, I know - we're standing here cheek-to-jowl with our teeth showing, she grins like she's just a precocious little schoolgirl and I'm Patient and Wise Big Sis, and here I am trying to look like I believe it. I try for her sake, I act like I don't know that none of this is real, because I want to pretend for a minute that it is. Okay? Can't we just pretend for a minute?_

_(Three years. That's all it took to eat her up)_

Bosco allowed himself to look up at the Bridgeview Hotel again. He glanced at the little parking lot next to the building, which wasn't very big; you had maybe fifteen spaces altogether, ten for guests and five for visitors. Wouldn't have been hard to pick Noble's car out. If Cruz had come here to kill him, she wouldn't have had any trouble pinpointing him. But something had obviously gone wrong, maybe he'd put up a fight, something had -

And there it was - the magic question. That little _something_ that had been bothering him about Tom Hendrickson all along. It was something Tom had said, something that had gotten lost almost immediately in all the chatter, the nonsense argument (Mare-IT-za versus Mare-EET-za) and the antics of Captain Jack.

_I think she might even have come back to have another go at him last night. There was quite a lot of shouting coming from the parking lot just after he left. The devilish part of me likes to think it was Ms. Zambrano, back for Round Two._

So what had bothered him so much about that? Well, nothing, really. It just sort of struck him as a subject he'd like to have explored a bit more. Shouting outside in the parking lot at night. It was just the kind of thing that snagged your interest, wasn't it? Especially if you were a cop doing some sniffing around.

_But you're not_, his angry little interior friend said. _A cop, that is._

No, he wasn't. And he hadn't gone to the Bridgeview in a cop frame of mind - he'd gone there half-hungover and feeling like flat shit.

But that didn't mean he couldn't still have the occasional lapse into clearheaded sobriety.

So - was it a lovers' quarrel between Kim and Noble that Tom heard last night? It was perfectly possible. Bosco had always figured Kim Zambrano for a bit of a drama-queen, so it was easy to picture her breaking up with Noble (and making a scene of soap-opera proportions in the process) and then moping around for a few hours before coming back for more. Then there'd be more arguing, more tears, perhaps some begging, and of course, lots of drama. She might storm off again in a huff. Or she might take him back. Make up with him, hop into his car with him, and drive off into the night with him. Maybe hit the Crimson Lion for a little dancing and drinking. Then back to Kim's place to do what came naturally.

Bosco looked at the picture again.

Raised voices from the parking lot. Quite a lot of shouting. Say it's _not_ Noble arguing with Kim. Say it's Noble arguing with _Cruz_. Pleading for his life, perhaps.

And what does Cruz do? Does she just ignore the whimpering, taunt him a bit, and then shoot him on the spot? No. She's in no shape to make a quick getaway, and she's got other places she wants to go. Other scores to settle. So she takes him hostage instead. _You get in the front, I get in the back_. Then she tells him to drive to somewhere more secluded, where she can do the job without raising an alarm.

Could somebody in her condition really do that, though? Strong as she was, her reflexes would be shot - pardon the tasteless pun - and Noble would probably be able to get the drop on her at the first opportunity.

_Maybe he did._

Yes. Maybe he'd turned on her, hurt or killed her, then dumped her or left her for dead somewhere. Calling the police would be the smart thing to do in that situation, but if he did that he'd be making more trouble for himself. Maybe he panicked. God knew he was enough of a coward.

There was something wrong with all of that, though. Something was not adding up.

_Oh, lookie here! _the angry little shit said._ The useless ex-cop's _really _getting ready to prove himself now! Somebody cue a fucking drum-roll! You GO, Sherlock!_

Bosco ignored this. Again - he wasn't a cop anymore. He knew that. He wasn't a cop in the sense of being employed as a public servant by the City of New York. But there was nothing wrong with his _brain_, and once he cleared the crap out of his head he found his bullshit-detector was in perfect working order. His cop's _intuition_. It was still there. It was like a limb that keeps twitching long after it's been severed.

Bosco looked at the photo yet again. Bridgeview to photo, photo to Bridgeview - that seemed to be the only two directions he could aim his eyes in. There you had the hotel where the unfortunate Aaron Noble may have met his fate. Here you had Lettie and Maritza in their parkas. The picture was in a frame the last time he'd seen it, sitting on top of a pile of other photos and personal trinkets and a set of ancient-looking rosary beads. The sum of Maritza Cruz's grief, around which their sickly little relationship had formed. Stupid death. _Pointless_ death. Resulting from the self-destructive lifestyle of a stupid kid making stupid choices.

There was nobody to blame for something like that, was there? Nobody but the stupid kid herself. And that made it all that much worse, didn't it? There was nobody to blame but Lettie.

_(That son of a bitch Buford _killed_ my _sister

So here in the photo you had the sum of Cruz's grief ... which had lasted right up until they found Noble. Until they drafted him as a Confidential Informant and the whole Richard Buford fixation began. Cruz decides that the biker is somehow responsible for Lettie's death, despite the fact that they'd already put Gary "Animal" Barnes - Lettie's dealer - away.

Not good enough for Cruz. As far as Cruz was concerned you had to go right to the top of the pyramid to get justice, and Bosco had wanted to help her get there. He'd wanted Buford, too. Of course he had - he was a cop and Buford was a criminal and that was just how it worked. Bosco had _wanted_ to put Buford away.

But Cruz had wanted it more. And what reason was there to assume her feelings on the matter had changed?

None whatsoever.

She wasn't going after Faith at all. She wasn't after Faith, or Noble, or Bosco himself. Not even Schaeffer or his lying, spying bitch Reyes. Cruz was after Richard Buford. Jesus, it was so fucking _obvious_, wasn't it - Cruz couldn't give up. She could never just _give up_. That was what he'd admired about her in the beginning, and it was also her central character flaw - she didn't know when to back down. Like the car chase with Buford, like the Nunez thing, like when she'd been _shot_. She was _still_ after Richard Buford, and she was using Noble somehow because Noble was the only lead she had. She'd taken him hostage. It didn't seem likely she could do that ... but then it also didn't seem _likely_ that she could have escaped from the hospital. She'd pulled it off somehow, and that was almost certainly what Tom Hendrickson had heard outside his window last night - Noble being hijacked.

_Bravo. Clap clap clap. Process of deduction yields big revelation. Ex-cop proves his mettle._

He hadn't proven anything, though - it was just a theory. But it was one that just felt more and more right. No matter what Schaeffer or Faith or Swersky might think, Cruz didn't have it in her to just go around killing indiscriminately - Bosco had known that from the start. And she didn't have it in her to murder cops, no matter what they'd done to her.

It was about her sister. It was Lettie. It was always Lettie.

So it seemed he'd just been presented with his big chance: he could finally _do_ something, something concrete. He'd played his little detective game and by pure fluke he'd found something solid, he'd literally _sat_ on a lead, and he could do something with it. He _had_ to do something with it. He had to take this new evidence (and evidence was what it was) to the police. To Swersky. Swersky would listen to him, he was sure. Cruz had taken Aaron Noble hostage, and she was using him to try to track down Richard Buford. And the chances of that actually happening were roughly nil.

The question therefore became: what would she do when that reality finally sank in?

There wasn't any choice in the matter. Bosco had to take the photo - and the questions it raised - to Lieutenant Swersky.

_If I do that, it'll be Hobart all over again_, he thought immediately. _They'll kill her. Cruz will _make_ them kill her_.

No. She'd know enough to back down when she was cornered.

_The same way she knew enough to back down at the Melrose when she had a bullet in her shoulder and two guns trained on her? The same way Hobart knew enough to back down when you went to arrest _him_? Oh please. A minute ago you were sitting here thinking about how Cruz's whole trip is never knowing when to give in._

Bosco dropped the picture of Cruz and her sister on the bench and put his head in his hands. He'd wanted to _do_ something. _Little Bosco wants to help_. And you had to be careful what you wished for, didn't you? Again, it was like the washroom at Mercy, the interview room with Schaeffer, lying in bed thinking about making up with Faith: it's easy to think big when you're safe on the sidelines, not so easy when you're in a position where you have to do something _real_, where you basically have to shit or get off the pot. He'd theorized and blue-skied and shot the breeze with himself about what Cruz's mental state might have become, and now the truth was literally sitting in the palm of his hand as a hard and tangible fact: Cruz had lost her mind. She really and truly had lost her mind. She'd snapped, just like Hobart.

_Oh, now don't get so upset, Sherlock, _the voice in his head piped up, and he was mildly horrified to notice that it was starting to sound a bit like Schaeffer's rumbling baritone._ You're acting like you're the only cop in the city, and you're not even a cop. Somebody else'll figure all this out for themselves. Somebody probably has. Somebody probably reported Noble missing. It's like you figured earlier - it might all be over now anyway. Go home and watch the news and maybe you'll find that Cruz is back safe in her bed and Noble's waiting to be debriefed by the police. Probably already brainstorming a book about the ordeal. "My Life with Mad-Dog Cruz." _

_Be smart. Forget about the picture and go home. _

Which was impossible. He couldn't forget about the picture any more than he could forget his own name, and he couldn't go home. Not now.

On the other hand, he couldn't go anywhere near the NYPD with what he had.

And as for breakfast ... needless to say, he'd lost his appetite. There were no longer any McMuffins in his immediate future.

So in a sense he was back to his earlier predicament; he didn't know what he was going to do or where he was going to go.

Bosco stood up, snatching up the photograph and stuffing it none too gently into his jacket pocket. When he went around his car and dropped into the driver's seat, he barely even noticed the ugly scratch on the door. The scratch was roughly a thousand light years away from where he was now, long dismissed, long forgotten. For the moment, anyway. It would be back. It would be back later, when he would wonder if he could blame it all on that one little act of petty vandalism. Without the scratch there would have been no spontaneous fit of laughter. Without the spontaneous fit of laughter he never would have ended up on that bench. And if he hadn't ended up on that bench, the one where Cruz had parked herself less than twenty-four hours before, he never would have seen the photograph.

And everything might have been different.

Life, as he'd thought several times already, could be funny sometimes.

Bosco drove away.

At almost the same moment, somewhere across the city, Aaron Noble was telling Maritza Cruz that she ought to be thinking about getting right with her God.


	19. Chapter 11: Cruz

Thanks as always for the reviews ... and to address iggy's specifically: by all means, don't sweat it - constructive criticism doesn't bother me. I realize the little Karen Tuttle backstory in Chapter 10 is a bit irrelevant to the overall plot - I just wanted to do a little teenage flashback for Bosco (kind of counterpart to the one Cruz got in Chapter 3) as a springboard for the rest of the chapter, and because I felt I was ignoring him and Faith while going too deep into Cruz - sort of threw off the balance a bit. And also, I wanted something a bit more lighthearted in what's otherwise been a pretty dark ride ... one that's only gonna get darker from here on in.

But you're right in that one massive chapter is hard to wade through on one long, unbroken page. Calling each new update a "chapter" might have been misleading, because they're often several smaller chapters strung together, and I should have kept that in mind when posting. It's a holdover from the original concept of this story, which was to alternate characters smoothly between chapters ... but as I got closer to the climax it started to become clear that the original concept just wasn't working anymore - character sequences tend to run long at this stage.

With that in mind, I've re-structured the story a bit, separating the chapters into their proper sub-sections to make navigation and bookmarking a bit easier. That being said, this chapter is a two-parter, but it's the last of the biggies - I've decided to finish the story in five shorter chapters rather than three longer ones - seems to read better that way anyway.

Now, on a different note ... I'm not a big fan of warnings in fanfiction - character deaths and such - but there is some stuff in this chapter that is definitely not for the squeamish. The upgrade to the "R" rating was made mostly because of this chapter and Chapter 13, both of which wrap up Cruz's part in the story and take her mental and physical breakdown to their logical conclusion. It might not bother anybody at all, but then again it might, so I thought it best to mention it. If you're like me and you snack while you read, you might want to leave the chips in the pantry and the Cokes in the fridge on this one ;)

I'm also not a fan of my own rambling Author's Notes, so I will now shut up :)

* * *

Chapter 11

_Cruz_

I.

The sling came off first - even before her jacket - because it was the easiest article of her clothing to remove. She'd taken it off and put it back on once already, so she knew how it worked. It was a slick little gadget, a humble little breakthrough in modern medicine in and of itself (much more humble than the prosthetic shoulder-joint she'd never gotten a chance to experience, and probably never would), all interlacing straps and buckles and a contoured, padded sleeve for the arm to rest in. The days of strategically folding and tying sheets around your neck were long over - somebody in the R&D department had finally figured out that knot-tying is not looked highly upon by the one-handed. You could just unhook the adjustable strap - almost like a bra - and _voila_: off it came.

Cruz managed to do that much by herself, using her right hand.

Her jacket came next. _That_ actually ended up being a bit trickier. She hadn't bothered putting the useless left arm through the sleeve (getting tangled up in her shirt had been enough of a nightmare, thank you very kindly) but sliding the sleeve off her _right_ arm still hurt like a mad motherfucker - the coat was still sopping wet and stuck to her skin, and as a result it had to be _peeled_ off.

Couldn't be done, not with one hand. She'd had to ask Noble to help her.

Her shirt was the hardest. The worst. She'd swollen up. Which was to say, the _shoulder_ had swollen up. She had a soupy, ridiculous half-memory of Noble telling her she looked like an overstuffed sausage, and she had to concede: that was about how she felt. She'd nearly gone out of her mind just trying to get the damned shirt _on_ - getting it _off_ nearly did her in. Part of it was because they were stupid in the way they tackled the problem (_he_ was stupid, anyway); they tried right away to get the shirt off the normal way - over her head, arms raised.

Oh, how she had _screamed_.

In the end Noble had been forced to cut it off her with a pair of scissors he'd produced from somewhere - it was the only way, and as a result one of her favorite shirts (the black tank-top that had always done such a magnificent job of showing off her cleavage) was now just so many meaningless strips of cloth on the floor. She had cried over it. She cried over everything now, it seemed. That was funny in its own way, part of the overall framework of irony that her life now seemed to be built on. Here you had Maritza Cruz, known in some quarters as Two-Bags Cruz, known in others as That Crazy Bitch, known everywhere as the ball-breaking, take-no-shit Sarge, Anti-Crime personified ... and she was crying over the scraps of her favorite shirt.

But no matter. They would have to find her something else anyway, something more accommodating. Something loose and billowy. Noble would have to find her a shirt somewhere. Noble was her nursemaid now. Her personal assistant. Her live-in healthcare companion. That really _was_ what it had all come down to, her grotesque little prediction had come to pass and she was smack in the pilot episode of _The_ _Odd Couple From Hell_, so would someone please cue theme music. They were at his safehouse now, the promised safehouse, and everything was going to be all right because she had the famed and acclaimed Aaron Noble looking after her - he would bring her chicken soup and help her take care of herself and hold her hair while she puked, and all he asked in return was for her to strip her tenderest, most secret (and most sacred) thoughts bare and let him pick at them, poke at them, and eventually translate the sum of her wasted life into a new bestseller for the masses.

They had not, as yet, discussed royalties and percentages.

Cruz didn't think they would be getting around to it anytime in the near future.

But back to the matter at hand. Sling and jacket and shirt were gone. They had progressed as far as her bandage, which had long ago lost its properties of adherence and was now sticking to her only by her own blood and sweat. At the moment she was naked from the waist up - she hadn't bothered with a bra - but she wasn't too worried about Noble getting all hot under the collar; she could still remember the pallid, shivering, sunken-eyed mess that she'd seen in her bedroom mirror, and she imagined she looked even less enticing now. Which was a moot point, because the man just wasn't attracted to her. Noble saw her as more of living biographical study, personal whipping-girl, and talking pet. He had Maritza Two-Bags Cruz in a glass box - so to speak - and she was completely at his mercy. That alone seemed to be enough to get him off.

She had no way to defend herself if he _did_ decide to get randy, though; her Tec-9 was gone. He had taken it from her and set it aside somewhere - she did not even remember how or when - and now she couldn't see it. Likewise the .45 automatic she'd liberated from him earlier - she could only assume that it was back in his coat where Noble no doubt felt it belonged. So that left her disarmed, half-naked, almost paralyzed with pain, and completely helpless. She was living in the very definition of nightmare.

_(because it is it is)_

"You ready?" Noble asked from somewhere above, startling her, making her cringe. Her eyes were closed and his voice seemed painfully loud in her ears ... loud, and yet at the same time distorted and somehow _wet_, as if it was gurgling up to her through about six feet of water.

"Cruz? Answer quick or I'm just gonna go right ahead and do this thing."

She thought about the question for another heartbeat (was she ready? She guessed she was), then nodded an affirmative, that funny little childlike nod she was using all the time now - chin goes up, chin goes down, three times fast.

She was ready.

"Please be careful," she murmured.

And there was something else funny - the dry, scratchy rasp that issued from her throat whenever she spoke. And the fat, slurry quality of the words themselves. She'd been biting her tongue again. Biting it, creating new pain to try to fight the old pain.

As for conversation, _please be careful_ was about all she had left. When Noble was helping her undress she had tried to think of some tough, snappy, Sergeant Cruz-ish way to tell him to watch himself - _you hurt me any more than necessary and I'll shoot out your kneecaps, and if you cop a feel I'll kick your balls out through your asshole_. Something like that.

And what came out was only that humble and yet urgent little phrase:

_Please be careful_.

Because it just hurt too much now. It hurt too much now to even _pretend_ to be a hardcase. Those days were over.

It seemed the Sarge was finally dead.

_At least for now_, a part of her added immediately, a part of her that sounded an awful lot like the Sarge, alive and kickin'. _He's gonna help me. He needs me. He'll help me get better. That's the deal - I talk, I become his next book, and he nurses me until I get back on my feet. I'll get better. He's gonna get me some dope. Morphine. Demerol. Something. He'll help me get better and then he'll help me get Buford._

Amen.

And as usual, there was immediate dissent from Papa's camp: _You don't really believe that, Maritza. You _can't_ really believe that_.

"I'm gonna fucking puke," Noble said casually, bringing her back again. His voice was still strangely wet, soupy, like it was coming from underwater.

Or maybe _she_ was the one underwater, and Noble was talking down to her through it.

She should probably find out which it was. She didn't want to drown.

God, it was getting hard to think straight.

Cruz opened her eyes. She was not underwater. She was in Noble's safehouse, and Noble himself was leaning over her.

His safehouse had turned out to be pretty strange. The room they were in was long, narrow, high-ceilinged, and oddly arcane in its design and decor. The couch she was half-sitting, half-lying on was low to the ground, ornate, and was probably about a hundred years old at a guess. But it was in shameful condition. _Shameful_. The wooden frame and legs were battered and scuffed, the flower-print upholstery faded and stained and pitted with cigarette burns. She could see a matching chair nearby, and in not much better shape. Claudia Cortez had one just like it in her apartment, but Claudia's was in fine condition. The one Cruz could see was a disgrace.

There was sunlight in here, too. The rain must have finally stopped, because the sun was pouring in across a chestnut-brown hardwood floor from two huge windows, one of which was directly above her. Each was easily fifteen feet high and ate up a lot of wall, and the ceiling itself was at least twenty feet.

_(No that's wrong, that's wrong, it wasn't like that before, something's wrong here something's very wrong with all of this)_

It was a beautiful place - in spite of the flea-bitten antique couch and chair - so Cruz decided to leave her eyes open for the moment. It was soothing. The _sun_ was soothing. She decided she would look at that, concentrate on that ... because she was not going to look at her shoulder. _Certainly_ not after Noble had removed the bandage. Why, when she'd checked the bandage yesterday -

_(?yesterday two days ago two hours days months years?)_

she hadn't been able to bring herself to even _glance_ at the wound itself. Just at the ratty dressing, which was ugly enough in itself. She could see it right now, in her peripheral vision - a dirty white thing, stained red with blood and yellowed at the edges with sweat.

"I _am_ gonna fucking puke," Noble repeated, the words spoken around a laughably forlorn sigh. He met her eyes and took a deep breath. "Here we go, Two-Bags. Time to assess the damage."

Noble pinched a corner of the bandage between his thumb and forefinger (with a prissy, nose-wrinkling disdain that should have been funny) and began to pull.

Pain flared across her shoulder. Felt like fire. Needles. Broken glass. Cruz began to scream.

Noble paused. He looked at her pensively for a moment. Then at the bandage. Then back at her again. His lip curled into a thoughtful sneer, as if he didn't quite know how to proceed.

He started to pull at the dressing again. Harder this time.

Cruz began to scream louder.

"Quit being such a big baby," he muttered, and there was something different -

_(Schaeffer that's not Noble's voice it's Schaeffer, _Schaeffer_ is here with me that can't be, it can't be right, it can't)_

about his voice now, something odd. "I thought you were supposed to be tough, Two-Bags. So start acting like it."

But she kept screaming, she wasn't screaming because she wasn't _tough_, she was screaming because it was stuck, oh it was _stuck_, it felt like he was flaying her skin off because the bandage was -

"Stuck," Noble said finally, and stopped pulling. His voice was his own again and not Schaeffer's, but it was tight, guttural, as if he was trying to hold onto his gorge. "It's all stuck to the wound. Jesus, what a mess. What a fucking repugnant mess." He smiled grimly at her, lip still curled up at the corner. He looked like he was doing a bad Elvis impression. "Gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way, my dear."

And before she could even ask him exactly what he meant by _old-fashioned way_, Noble snatched the dressing off in one lighting-quick yank. He even put a little flourish into it, _ta-da_, like a magician doing a small but really neat trick.

And there was a _sound_. She actually heard it make a _sound_. An obscene sort of _shluck!_

Cruz howled and squeezed her eyes closed again, not so much from the pain but from the fear of what was underneath the dressing. He didn't even give her a chance to turn her head away.

There was a moment or two of silence. She could feel her heart hammering; it felt like it had taken up new digs somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.

"Now," she heard Noble gurgle, "I think I really _am _gonna puke."

Still reeling from having the bandage ripped away (_shluck!_) and panting with the strain of screaming through it all, it was with some surprise that Cruz actually found herself grinning. Because even now she found she still liked it when Noble suffered. And it sure sounded like he was suffering.

Just so long as he didn't puke on _her_.

"Not ... not very pretty, is ... is it, Noble?" she gasped, out of breath. "That's what ... what your fucking expanding bullets ... that's what they do to people."

"I was actually talking more about this," he said. He held the bandage up in front of her and wiggled it. Through her half-lidded eyes and her delirium, Cruz thought it looked a bit like he was holding up the bloody carcass of a bird. Perhaps a seagull. Tonight's dinner, maybe. She laughed thinly.

Then she opened her eyes -

_(focus)_

all the way, and saw that it _was_ the dressing, it was just the bandage that had seen better days, gummy with sweat and half-congealed blood ...

... and a spongy-looking yellow-green discharge that turned her heart into a cold lump of ice in her chest.

Noble saw her expression change and nodded. "Infection," he said with a grim _I-told-you-so_ smirk. He looked at the dressing again, his throat working, adam's apple bobbing crazily; apparently he was still trying not to throw up.

Because it _smelled_, too. It didn't just _look_ bad - it _smelled_.

"That right there is some nice, juicy pus. You'll be needing more than just painkillers, Cruz. You need antibiotics. I'll have to run down to the pharmacy - "

_(?pharmacy?)_

" - later on and get you something to keep you in the game."

"In the game," she repeated stupidly. She was terrified, so she closed her eyes again. It seemed like the only thing to do under the circumstances. The buzz in her head was back now. Loud. _Too_ loud. The wasps. The wasps in her head. It seemed to reverberate not only in her ears but all the way down her throat and into her stomach.

"I want you to look at it," Noble said. He almost sounded angry. He also sounded -

_(wrong, all wrong, the house is wrong this is ALL wrong)_

- like Schaeffer again.

"No," she murmured, but she opened her eyes anyway. She looked at Noble. He was still there, but he'd become fuzzy, indistinct. The sun was shining on him. The sun from the big window behind her.

"_Look_ at it," Noble said irritably, gesturing at her left arm. His voice was sounding more and more like Schaeffer's. "For Christ's sake would you _look_ at the fucking thing? It's disgusting. And you let it get like that. _Disgusting_."

"Just ... just help me," she whispered. It was all she could think of to say.

"Help you?" Noble cried shrilly. His voice cut through the buzz in her head like a razor blade, stirring the wasps into a frenzy. "Look at what you've done to yourself! You didn't take care of it! _LOOK_!"

Cruz looked down.

And saw that her left arm was rotting.

_Rotting_.

The arm had blown up like an innertube and turned a rich, leathery black. Great ragged swatches of skin were peeling off like rolls of old wallpaper; the exposed flesh underneath was a sickish mess of that curdy yellow-green pus. In other words, she was crispy on the outside and chewy chewy chewy on the inside. The hand had fattened up as well; it had blown up and frozen into a gnarled, stiff thing that now looked like the sausage-fingered glove of a cartoon character. Bones poked through the ends of the fingers like misshapen claws.

No.

No, that couldn't be. It couldn't be. It couldn't -

_(doesn't matter if it turns black and falls off)_

have happened, not so fast, not in such a short time. It was a trick. It had to be some kind of nasty trick, Noble had done something to her while she was passed out, he'd covered her arm with something, smeared on some kind of black jelly or tar or something, or wrapped it in some leathery material. It wasn't _real_.

It _couldn't_ be real.

Cruz saw her right hand hover out and touch her left forearm. She didn't want to do it but she didn't seem to have any say in the matter at all, and when her fingers brushed the bloated, blackened skin they found it rigid. Numb. _Dead_.

No trick.

"It needs to come off," Noble said. "We'll have to take it off and throw it away. Throw it away somewhere where it can't hurt you anymore."

Cruz looked up. She was terrified almost to the point of senselessness. All she could say was: "Uh?"

Noble said no more. Instead, he took hold of her left hand - her useless lump of a left hand - and held it. Dead flesh crackled like dry leaves. Her pinky finger snapped off and fell to the floor.

"We're looking at a battlefield amputation here, Two-Bags," Noble said calmly. Down on one knee as he was, holding her decaying hand as he was, he looked for all the world like a suitor about to pop the big question in the best of traditions.

"Noble," she managed shakily, her heart freezing over again as she started to realize what he was about to do. "Oh, no, Noble, no, don't ... _don't_ ... _DON'T_ - !"

Still holding her left hand, Noble stood up and planted his left foot in the center of her chest (when she looked down she saw that she was wearing her black tank-top again ... and that made no sense at all because Noble had cut it off only five minutes ago, she was _sure_ he had cut it off) ...

... and then he grabbed her left wrist with his _other_ hand for a better grip ...

... and then he _pulled_. He pulled with the carefree zeal of a man in a friendly game of beachfront tug 'o war.

There was a wet squelching sound, like someone pulling their foot out of thick mud. A sense of being pushed back and pulled forward at the same time, of being _stretched_ in two directions at once. The breath was driven from her -

_(oh no no that hurts it hurts it HURTS!)_

and then, suddenly, there was a horrible, meaty tearing sound, a meaty tearing _sensation_, and she _snapped_ back -

_(like that day that day all those years ago Lettie when Lettie was trying to pull me in to see her fish and she let go and I almost fell)_

and then Aaron Noble was standing in front of her, holding her own severed left arm in his hand like a grotesque drumstick.

There was no blood. Scraps of dead flesh hanging in strings and flaps, but no blood.

There _were_ maggots, though. Lots of them. The stump of her newly amputated arm was lively with them, just a-hoppin' and a-boppin' with them, and she could even _hear_ them - they made a moist, gooey sort of sound, like someone stirring a spoon through something thick. Custard, maybe. The flesh around them was decayed and reeking, the bone an ugly little gray nub.

Noble looked at the arm with the clinical eye of a doctor; he seemed to have more or less gotten over his squeamishness. "That's about what I thought," he said sagely, and then threw the grisly thing aside. Cruz watched her own arm land with a thump in one of the sunbeams cast by the window above her -

_(wrong the window Noble the sun the chair the couch my arm wrong my arm my arm MY ARM WRONG WRONG THIS IS ALL WRONG)_

and she saw that it was moving. Dead and stiff but _moving_. The fingers (five of them again, explain _that_) twitched dreamily, as if they felt revitalized by the sun and were enjoying it. A few maggots had come loose and were scattered around it. They appeared to have died. They looked like tiny white pills.

"You'll start feeling better in no time now that it's off," Noble said in that same calm, just-discussing-the-weather voice. The voice of a wise man, a man of the world, a man who knows where he stands and is comfortable with who he is. She realized that Noble was now speaking in Spanish. It made him sound like her father.

"It's my arm," she heard herself sob, reaching out plaintively with the one she still had. "Please put it back on. It's my arm. My arm. Please -"

_(doesn't matter if it turns black and falls off)_

"- put it back on -"

"You'll feel better with that nasty old thing off you, Cruz."

"- it's mine. _Mine_. My arm - "

_(oh it hurts it hurts it hurts)_

"- please put it back on -"

But that arm was never going back on. No way, Jose. As Cruz watched, it began to twist and writhe and flop like a beached fish. It drummed against the hardwood floor and, already swollen with decay, began to expand even more. It began to swell like ... well, like an _overstuffed sausage_.

Then it burst. The skin split in two dozen places with another of those rubbery -

_(shluck!)_

tearing sounds. Maggots spilled out by the hundreds. By the _thousands_ -

"AH-_HA_!" Noble cried triumphantly as she stared at the swirling white carpet; all she could see of her poor arm were a few flaps of decayed skin that looked like burnt paper. "_That's_ the trick, right there!" he shouted at her. His eyes sparkled. He looked positively _exalted_. "You have to get right to the _source_ of the problem with matters like this! Aren't you happy to be free of it? Aren't you? She hated you, you know! She hated your fucking _guts_!"

But Cruz didn't hear him. He wasn't making sense anymore but that wasn't what concerned her, what concerned her was getting her arm back, because it was _her_ arm, it belonged to _her_, and ...

... and then something occurred to her.

She realized that a stump, _any_ stump on _any_ severed limb always has its counterpart stump (a stump begets a stump, you might say); there was still the matter of her shoulder, and she knew in that moment -

"You should start feeling better in a little while with that nasty thing off you."

_(WRONG)_

that when she looked down at her shoulder she would see the same thing she'd seen on the arm, _in_ the arm, a corrupt and flyblown cave full of maggots, only they would be _in_ her, they would be _eating_ in her, and Noble was watching her he was watching her and none of this was right the safehouse Noble she wasn't in any safehouse she was in Noble's -

* * *

- car and none of it was happening, it was all wrong and she was -

* * *

- in Noble's car, still in Noble's car and she awoke with sweat pouring down her face and tears spilling down her cheeks and her breath sobbing in and out of her chest. There was no safehouse. No high ceiling. No tall windows spilling yellow, ethereal sunlight across a dark hardwood floor. No Noble and no perverse little bandage removal ceremony. Her arm was still attached to her (for all it was worth), not bloated up or black or splitting open, and -

_(oh and this is the BEST part of all)_

- there were no maggots.

There was only rain. Rain beating against the roof of the car. Wasps buzzing in her head. Sweat pouring down her face, which was hot and throbbing and felt like it had swollen up -

_(like the arm black bloated rotting splitting splitting open)_

Cruz shut her eyes and moaned. It was all still right there on the surface of her mind, and every nerve-ending in her body, every senseless instinct was screaming that it was real, that it had happened, that it not only _had_ happened but was _still_ happening, she would look down and see the gaping, worm-ridden hole in the side of her body where her arm used to be -

_STOP IT!_

Yes. She was still in Noble's car. She could see that. Safe and hidden away. She squinted out through the windshield and could make almost nothing out through the rain; just a blurred suggestion of the abandoned buildings he'd parked them behind, the cratered skin of the parking lot, the dumpster in front of the car. But it was enough to tell her where she was - she was still in Noble's Mercedes, and Noble himself must still be at his meeting. Still shooting pool and talking about all things Buford with his Disciples contact. Iggy. Iggy something.

Iggy _something_.

What was the name again? Sounded French. _Mar_ ... _Marchi_ ... something like that. She couldn't remember, and it didn't matter anyway. She couldn't _think_. She couldn't think through the wasps, couldn't think around the steel ball in her skull, which had grown to fill her entire head and was now pulsing behind her face, her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, even in her fucking _teeth_. She could feel it in her teeth and even in the hole where that one molar -

_(what were you, some kind of an Affirmative-Action hire?)_

was still missing. Pain. Pain everywhere. That was all there was, ever had been, ever would be. Here in the car or in some bizarre high-ceilinged room in her head, the constant in both places was pain. She'd tried to escape it into sleep, and it had simply found her and dragged her back.

It had felt so real. God, so _real_. Even when he started to -

_(stop it)_

even when he started to pull -

_(STOP IT!)_

Right, right, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She was thirsty again. Thirsty, but there was nobody here to help her drink. Besides which, she had no idea where Noble had put the fucking water bottle. And she could barely move. She was terrified of moving.

Nevertheless, she moved. She had to. She leaned down and groped blindly for the water bottle Noble had held to her lips a few minutes -

_(?minutes hours days months years?)_

ago.

Thick, heavy pressure welled up across the bridge of her nose, cheeks, forehead. Pain in the shoulder, her chest, neck, legs, take your pick. But it was here somewhere, that little bottle, the one with _Adidas_ stamped on the side; he'd taken it and set it down somewhere, she remembered seeing him put it down somewhere nearby, under the dash, near the pedals ...

She might have found it if she'd been able to persist, keep up her strength, keep her will strong -

_(focus!)_

but she was suddenly overcome and her muscles gave out and she slumped back in her seat again, eyes closing, head spinning, wasps buzzing.

The arm.

The arm all black and putrefying. Like rotten fruit.

God, so _real_.

_(stop it)_

But it _had_ felt real, she'd really thought they were there, she'd jumped the gun and put herself in the safehouse with Noble, and it had felt so _real_. And the arm ... black and bloated and shiny, she'd been called out to stinkers before, suicides and heart attacks discovered days or even weeks after death, and that was what it had looked like, that was what it had smelled like, flesh puffed up and gassy and stinking -

_(stop it!)_

How long before it really happened, though? That was the question. How long before she looked down and saw it really _was_ turning bla -

**_STOP IT!_**

Yes. Yes, she had to stop it. Shouldn't think about it.

_He'll fix me up, _she thought instead, and felt a bit better. This had become her little mantra now, an odd little prayer of a sort. Means by which to focus._ He's gonna get me something for the pain. Something to help patch me up. We'll hide out, lay low. I'll start to heal up. Get back on my feet. This is just the hump, just a little rough patch - I get over this hump and I'll be fine. Everything's gonna be fine._

Well, of course it would! Everything would turn out rosy, everything always did for Maritza Cruz, it was like a law of nature, just a law of nature, everything always turned out all right for her.

Even this.

Yes, even this.

But right now she hurt. She _was_ rotting when she thought about it, she was rotten right through with pain that wasn't just confined to her shoulder anymore, pain that had escaped from her shoulder and now it was everywhere, in her limbs, in her chest, in her guts, in her head, face, cheeks, eyes. She wanted to cry with it. She wanted to but she wasn't going to let herself do that anymore because she was -

_(thought you were supposed to be tough, Two-Bags)_

tough. Still tough. She would fight it. For Lettie, she would fight it. She would -

_(you're supposed to be tough?)_

savor the pain even though she wanted to cry with it, scream with it, the way she had screamed that night -

_(What were you, some kind of an Affirmative-Action hire?)_

in the alley, savor it even though her head was throbbing, buzzing, the steel ball had grown and there was -

* * *

- pain across the bridge of her nose, her cheek, her mouth, her lips mashed against her teeth and she was falling backwards, her gun flying out of her hand, and then she heard him -

_(you're supposed to be tough?)_

and she felt a hand wrap itself around her ankle and start to drag her back into the alley.

He hadn't run away. He'd just hidden himself somewhere in the shadows and waited for her to let her guard down. When she obliged him, he attacked her. Later she would learn that he'd done it with a two-by-four. Nailed her right in the face with it. She would be taken to Mercy when this was all over, and there Dr. Fields would tell her that it was a pure miracle she still had all her front teeth and her nose wasn't squashed all over her face. Dr. Fields, the nice ER doc who would later go on to convince Detective Schaeffer not to cuff her to her bed when the big son of a bitch came for her.

But none of that had happened yet. At the moment all Maritza Cruz knew was that she was being murdered. All she knew was that she'd made a mistake, let her guard down, and now this guy _had_ her. She had no gun and no backup and he had her, and she had the idea that he was going to take his sweet time putting an end to her. And over what? Furs. Stolen furs. She was going to die over the pelts of dead animals. This guy was supposed to have been an easy takedown, the kind of thief who was just supposed to drop and roll over when cornered. The kind of guy who'd rather run than fight, the kind of guy who'd never dream of whacking a cop in the face with a plank, risking his life and turning a property crime into a violent assault on a police officer.

But this guy now ... it seemed like she'd found herself a sadistic fucking psycho in this guy. Was that why she was screaming for help at the top of her lungs as he dragged her along the ground? Was it because her gun was long lost somewhere in the dark and a sadistic fucking psycho had her where nobody could see them, and if she was lucky he'd kill her, and if she _wasn't _lucky he'd rape her and _then_ kill her? Or was she screaming just because it was all going to end over something as inconsequential - as _absurd_ - as stolen _furs_? Was that the real reason she was screaming for help while this nameless son of a bitch beat on her and dragged her along by her leg, like a caveman dragging a woman around by the hair in one of those old cartoons?

Or was it something else? Might she be screaming because of something else -

_(I'm sorry, 'Ritza)_

_- _entirely?

Interesting question.

And here was another: why did she _stop_ screaming when his fist crashed across her mouth? Because the blow stunned her? Because everything went white and hot, leaden pain again bloomed in her jaw and her cheek and her head and knocked her momentarily senseless? Because the punch sent a tooth hurtling out of her mouth, trailing a streamer of blood behind it like the tail of a little comet?

Or was it because she -

_(You're supposed to be tough?)_

could hear sirens and she knew help was on the way?

Couldn't be the sirens, because the sirens didn't matter. Hell, she wasn't even sure they were real. She'd just taken two powerful blows to the head, so the prospect of being saved in the nick of time might just be her own rattled senses messing with her. She'd probably be dead by the time help arrived anyway, because the psycho got her up against the wall and breathed that -

_(What were you, some kind of an Affirmative-Action hire?)_

memorable little phrase into her face, and he was choking her now. Had a lead pipe across her throat. Cool metal against her skin. She could feel the subtle texture of it, down to the little flakes of rust that ran along its length. He was bigger than her, stronger than her, leaning his weight into it. She could feel her own windpipe being crushed. Wasn't that something? She couldn't have screamed now even if she wanted to.

And she didn't want to. Scream, that was. Not anymore. There was a man hurting her, _killing_ her right in the here and now, and yet she wasn't thinking about that in quite the right fashion; her brain didn't seem to be sounding the proper alarm bells or triggering the right survival responses. She wasn't thinking about this quite right - not now, with a metal bar crushing her windpipe, and not a moment ago, when he was dragging her along the ground and she could feel the pavement grating under her and shards of broken glass poking her and cutting her through her clothes. She didn't know _what_ she was thinking, it was so hard -

* * *

- to think, and she was -

_(rain battering the roof Noble's car still in Noble's car pain pain it hurts oh God it hurts make it stop hurting)_

and she was -

* * *

- at Mercy hospital, and she almost cried out when she saw her.

She didn't. Of course she didn't. Bosco was on one side of her and Ty Davis on the other, and she was in a crowded ER. Nothing could be allowed to come through in her expression or her body language, and nothing did. She made the save. Nothing came through when she turned and saw Lettie through the door of one of the trauma rooms, thrashing and snapping and hissing and cursing through that stupid phony accent of hers and looking like something out of the fucking _Exorcist_. Nothing came through when she actually went in and stood at the foot of her sister's bed, when she got close enough to smell the shitty, pissy reek of her, to see the ashy color of her skin, the open sores, the charcoal smeared on her face. The fact that she probably wouldn't have made a hundred pounds soaking wet and holding a bowling ball.

Nothing came through in Maritza Cruz's face or body language but a subdued and rather dignified anger. She didn't explode - she just sort of _smoldered_. She remained the Sarge. She was the Sarge all over. Her face, the set of her shoulders, the look in her eyes. She snapped off a few terse comments at Lettie, first in Spanish and then in English, and her voice came out sounding just fine - authoritative, softly furious, carrying the promise of later retribution. There was no tremble and it didn't catch in her throat. Good, very good. Everything about her was perfectly _Sarge_.

Inside she was cold. Inside she was terrified. Terrified of what she was seeing in front of her, terrified that she -

_(gave up on her)_

could have missed what was happening, and now -

_(so she gave up on herself)_

things had gotten this bad. Lettie had been slipping further and further downhill for a while now, Maritza knew that even though she hadn't spoken to her sister in a long time -

_(and underneath it all she knows that it was just her own weakness, her own fear, her own unwillingness to face the inevitable crash that made her turn her back)_

but now Lettie had actually _crashed_. She'd overdosed before but _never_ like this, it had never been _this_ bad. She'd never _looked_ this bad before.

Hell, she'd never _smelled_ this bad before, and Maritza wanted to go around the bed, shove Fields and the nurses aside, grab the stupid little twat by the shoulders and shake her until her neck snapped and her fucking head rolled right off her fucking shoulders, she wanted to scream at her, get right down into her face and _scream_ at her. Because when she couldn't identify the source of her own terror, Maritza Cruz responded by becoming enraged. And wasn't that understandable? It _was_, wasn't it? She was enraged at her stupid little ignorant trash-talking twat of a sister but there was something else underneath that, something so black and alien and horrible that she couldn't even look at it or acknowledge its existence, but she knew it was there, she -

_(can never take it back, never never, too late, damage is done, spilled milk, no second chances, no going back, failed her, let her slip, abandoned her I'm sorry sorry never meant to never meant to hit her to hurt her)_

wanted to throw her head back and scream, she wanted to tear the place apart around her, smash the trauma room and everything in it to rags and splinters, smash everything, knock the trays flying and shatter the IV's and overturn the bed with the stupid little twat still in it, pull her gun and shoot up whatever was left, shoot anybody who tried to stop her or restrain her. And Lettie would look up at her, she would _reach_ up to her, because that was what Lettie always used to do when anything went wrong and she needed 'Ritza to make it all better - she would reach up, arms outstretched, wanting to be held. She always wanted to be held, and Maritza used to do just that, she used to hold her ... but now she'd just kick Lettie all over the room. Corner to corner, end to end.

And then good old 'Ritza might just put her own gun to her own temple and make Lettie watch her blow her own brains out, and maybe then she'd see. Maybe she would see what it was like to watch somebody you loved waste themselves.

And of course she doesn't do any of those things, what she does is stand there and be Sergeant Cruz, cold and professional, she can't scream and maybe that's why -

* * *

- she screams while the nameless psycho is dragging her along by her leg, maybe she knows she's going to die and now it doesn't matter anymore, she can scream all she wants, she can scream and kick and thrash all she wants, because she's being dragged to her death and the central thought in her mind is her sister, the way her sister looked that day she wanted to scream and scream and scream and rip the place to pieces.

And when the lead bar is across her throat and she can feel the flakes of rust on its surface biting into her skin, when she can feel her windpipe being crushed, it's possible that she decides this is right, that this is the way it ends, it ends over furs, stolen furs and not the war on drugs (oh, so sorry - that should read: the War on Drugs, capital W, capital D), because what does it matter now anyway?

Does that sound a bit cornball? Does it have a touch of the _schmaltz_ about it? Maybe so, but the fact remains: when the world starts to turn black, Maritza Cruz accepts it.

And then all of a sudden the pressure's off, the lead pipe is gone, Cruz is down on her knees coughing and choking and the guy's moaning on the ground with a bullet in his shoulder.

Yokas. Yokas has just saved her life. It's too early in the game for that to be very ironic; Aaron Noble and the Melrose bloodbath are still three months in the future. But even now Cruz doesn't like the snotnosed, holier-than-thou bitch, and she'd been ready, she'd been _ready_, she'd decided that this was how it was going to be: Sergeant Maritza Cruz, twenty-nine years of age, choked to death in an alley after a sting goes sour. Police funeral, twenty-one gun salute, planted by the State of New York. Mourned by no one, missed by few. No family, no friends, colleagues who at best tolerated her and at worst despised her outright. A few scattered acquaintances, that was all: Boscorelli (who barely knew her), Ramon Valenzuela (who had grown away from her), and Claudia Cortez (who only _thought_ she knew her). Pretty short fucking list. People who would spare her a thought (maybe a prayer, in Claudia's case) and move on with their lives in short order.

And she could deal with that. She'd been ready to meet the end of her miserable, empty, futile fucking life (indeed, she'd just reached the conclusion that her fucking life _was_ miserable, empty and futile) and then Yokas saved it and condemned her to get up and do it all over again the next morning. And the morning after that. And the morning after that. Get up alone, eat breakfast alone, go to work alone, come home to her empty apartment alone, eat dinner alone, go to bed alone, repeat step one.

And all the time knowing that she'd let her go. That she'd let her sister go.

Maybe that was why she went up to Yokas afterwards and unloaded on her instead of thanking her. Only while her mouth was running (_this is Anti-Crime, this is the way we do things on the streets, don't you dare start trouble over shit that doesn't concern you, blah blah blah_) in her mind she was back in that trauma room at Mercy, smashing the place up, kicking Lettie around the floor, in her head she was still -

* * *

- in -

* * *

- Noble's car.

Noble's car and the rain was still coming down and the wasps were still buzzing in her head. Two things that had fused into one; the buzz in the center of her mind and that muffled, vaguely metallic ratta-tat-tat of the rain on the roof of Noble's Mercedes. They just sort of_ fit_ together.

And pain. She was still in Noble's car and she kept slipping off, slipping down, slipping up, slipping into sleep, unconsciousness, semi-consciousness, something. She was dizzy so it was hard to tell, hard to make the proper metaphor for it. She just sort of kept ... _slipping around_, leave it at that. And the first thing she sensed when she managed to attain a reasonable degree of lucid thought was not the rain on the roof or the sloppy man-smell of Noble's car or even the buzz in her head; the first thing she always sensed was pain.

And thirst. Two more things that had fused into one: pain and thirst. You might want to call it something like _pain/thirst_. Or why not just go the distance and squash the two together and say _painthirst, _because that _did_ have a bit of a ring to it.

There, now - she had just coined a new term. The former Sergeant Maritza Cruz, with only a high school diploma and not a day of higher education to her name, and she'd just invented a new English word. _Painthirst_. Now she'd have to start working on the Spanish equivalent. Because this was something new, she'd been thirsty before but _thirsty_ wasn't what this was. The existing terminology - English _or_ Spanish - could not do the experience any kind of justice. There was being _thirsty_ and there was _thirst_. This was thirst. This was dying-in-the-desert thirst. This was _painthirst_. Thirst that bordered on agony. Thirst that bordered on _insanity_.

She no longer had any choice in the matter: she had to go looking for the water bottle again, and this time she had to find it.

And so she started the little dance again, leaning down in her seat, biting her tongue against the pain (the poor little thing was almost chewed into hamburger now; a little chunk about the size of a pea had already come off and gone slip-sliding down her throat; soon she wouldn't be able to speak at all) her good hand skittering blindly around the floor of the car like some pale, cave-dwelling insect. It was down there somewhere, the little plastic flask with _Adidas_ on the side and (if God willed it; if God _existed_) a little bit of water left in it. After all, this was a _car_ we were talking about here. Not an SUV, not a big fucking Winnabago - she was in a _car_. Not a whole lot of floorspace in here. So how far could the goddam thing have gone?

Pretty far, apparently; she was looking, but she wasn't finding. Tears poured down her cheeks. The wasps buzzed in her head. Her face throbbed. A steady, unconscious little stream of whimpering cries issued from her mouth, some of which almost made speech. Her lips moved, occasionally forming words or something reasonably close, but mostly it was just a low, monotonous kind of gibbering that went along with a dizzying, fragmented -

_(ski slope snow down the back cold wet) (you fucking TRIPPED me!) (Yokas shot me Yokas-bitch shot me) (Give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job) (I'm sorry, 'Ritza) (never meant to hit her oh sorry I'm sorry the wiggling it was the wiggling fingers) _

rat-run of images that spooled across her mind. She chewed obsessively at her tongue. Blood kept filling her mouth; she swallowed it over and over with a kind of feverish, absent-minded annoyance, the way a woman might repeatedly brush a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes.

Her hand closed around something plastic. Cylindrical.

The _bottle_.

She fished it up. The whimpering rose in pitch and peaked in a funny little croak of triumph. She held the bottle over her head for a moment and shook it like an athlete waving a trophy, grinning savagely, her teeth streaked with blood. Faith Yokas might have found this grin rather familiar; it was kissing-cousin to the one Cruz had worn just after being shot. It made her look like a cannibal.

In a sense she was. It had gotten so bad now that she was literally eating her own tongue.

That water, though ... it was still gonna taste _sooo_ good, tongue or no tongue, it would taste so good and for a moment it would erase the pain altogether, she was convinced it would, because the pain and the thirst were one now. _Painthirst_, remember? One connected to the other. If one was quenched, the other would be, too - at least temporarily. That was the working theory, anyway.

She spun the cap off -

with her thumb and turned the bottle upside down over her mouth.

It was empty.

Cruz brought it back down to eye-level and looked at it with stupid surprise.

_Empty. _

And she should have known that. It was lighter than it should have been and there was no liquid sloshing around inside - clues which all pointed to a diagnosis of _empty_. It was also the wrong bottle altogether. Wrong shape, wrong color, wrong everything. It was _not_ the one Noble had helped her drink from; it was the one he'd bought to go with her sad little breakfast. The same one that later rolled under the seat when he started torturing her with the tape deck, spilling its contents. The cap on this one was a screw-top; the cap on the one Noble had held to her lips was a pop-up valve. The label on this one said _Aquafina_ (Pure Refreshment!); the one Noble had fed her from had the _Adidas _name stenciled on it.

She'd fought for - and won - an empty plastic bottle.

_But there's water everywhere! Water outside _right now_, falling from the sky in buckets. All you've gotta do is roll down the window and hold the bottle out!_

Which was sort of like saying she could just tap her heels together three times and all of this would be over, she'd be home in her bed and this would all turn out to have been a bad dream. She could no more find the strength to roll down the window, hold the bottle out, and let it fill than she could wish herself away from all of this, wish herself back into a warm bed and a body that was still healthy and intact.

Water water everywhere and not a fucking drop to drink. Ha ha.

Cruz threw the bottle at the windshield. It bounced back, hit her square in the face, then rebounded over onto the driver's seat. She uttered a wild, involuntary laugh in spite of herself, then began to cry. She sagged over in the seat and cried until she started to slip again, and this time she let herself slip because if she did she could at least forget the -

_(painthirst)_

the sound of the rain, she might forget -

_(Lettie always wants to be held always puts her arms up)_

the wasps in her head and things began to dim and she let herself be swept -

_(the icicles she'll reach up she always reaches up wants to be held wants to knock them down) (hit her I'm sorry I'm sorry) (fire air's thick can't breathe can't) (I felt her go) (let go of my hand almost fell) (Papa bought me fish!) (She died a little while ago)_

into the flow, she let herself slip and she didn't care if she saw Lettie, she always saw Lettie anyway, Lettie now and forever, Lettie with her arms up she -

_(always puts -_

* * *

- _her arms -_

* * *

- up to be held.

Lettie sitting splay-legged on the ground with her arms up, locked in classic _please-hold-me-'Ritza_ position. Arms up, fingers wiggling.

And that's what gets Maritza, that's what makes her strike her sister in anger for the first and only time in her life - the fingers. The wiggling fingers. It isn't the fact that the girl is wearing this stupid pink frilly tank-top/shorts ensemble with a fluffy teddy bear on the chest (the fluff's real, too - white, downy stuff glued over the picture; the shorts have a smaller version on the left hip). It's the fact that the girl is eighteen years old and she's got her hair in pigtails and she's dressed like an eight-year-old trying to dress like a _hooker_, and she's holding her arms up to her sister and wiggling her fingers. It's fucking _grotesque_. Sick parody of the toddler who used to walk up to her and stick her pudgy arms in the air. _Pick me up, 'Ritza_.

And the thing is, this shouldn't even be happening. She cut Lettie off a year ago (not long after a certain ski trip on which a certain photograph had been snapped) but the two still have the occassional run-in. And there is always that bizarre, eerie sense of predestination in these meetings, of _Fate_ with a capital _F_, because New York's a big city and yet every now and then the Cruz sisters can still collide, just as they will collide in that hospital room at Angel of Mercy after the final crash. Maritza tried to turn her back, but some grim, pitiless God is saying no, sorry, she's your burden, now and forever, you made your promise, you put your name to your verbal contract, and so here she is.

Here she is, holding her arms up, wiggling her fingers.

And that's what does it. The wiggling fingers are what makes Maritza - already buzzing on adrenaline, the red curtain already hanging over her mind - punch her sister in the face. She's been tempted in the past, God knows she's been tempted before and she never succumbed, and she'll be tempted again and she _won't_ succumb -

_(she will remain perfectly _Sarge

but in this moment she hits her, it's Cam Wilcox all over again, only this time it's her sister's face on the business end of her fist. Her sister's blood on her knuckles.

And that same sense of how quickly things can go sour. How easily.

Here are the facts: less than ten minutes ago Maritza Cruz and Johnny Hoyle were sitting in an unmarked RMP on a meal break. And there, right in front of them, is this skinny little hooker in a pink tank and shorts getting into a car to do some bi'nez. And did the happy couple even have the decency to drive away? Nope - they just got right down to the bi'nez right there; Maritza and Johnny saw two heads bobbing around (hammering out a price) and then suddenly there was only _one_ head bobbing around, because the one belonging to the pink-clad businessgirl in the passenger seat had dropped out of sight.

A moment later the car began to rock.

So what did Maritza and Johnny do? They were _Anti_-Crime, and what they were witnessing was, technically speaking, a _crime_. But they were also working a grueling midnight shift and they'd just started a meal period; Johnny had just unwrapped a big sloppy burger and Maritza had just taken the first bite of a ham sandwich, and maybe a whore giving a lil' head right in front of them wasn't really worth the effort and the paperwork and the ruined lunch.

On the other hand, it was the sort of floor-show that kind of killed the appetite anyway, wasn't it?

Johnny called it: the hooker had her dirty duty to perform, but they were paid public servants and as such they had theirs. Cruz re-wrapped her once-bitten ham sandwich and Johnny did the same with his burger. They went in, and of course it ended up being none other than Letitia Cruz, the one and only, Lettie in her pigtails and stupid kindergarten outfit. Her latest trade secret. She was eighteen, but small enough and skinny enough (and cute enough; she had another year before she hit full-bore junkie) to pass for much younger, and she used the Lolita act as part of her appeal. She catered to the perverts, the sick fucks who fantasized about their daughters but didn't quite have the guts to do anything about it. The nice, upstanding family men who snuck out at night and went to the "seedy side of town" (Lettie and Maritza's neighborhood, in other words) to look for a safe release.

And Lettie had nabbed herself a juicy one tonight; her client was a nice-looking guy of about forty-five. Black. Balding. Wearing a knitted sweater stretched over a generous potbelly. Glasses set in neat, slender frames. Dear ol' Dad, driving a sleek, bottle-green sedan and looking like the rabbit caught in the headlights.

Maritza was on him before he knew what was happening. She holstered her gun, mainly because she wanted to use her fists; the rage had come on her, the red curtain had fallen over her mind and she wanted to kill him, but she wanted it to be a bare-knuckle job. In a sense, this too was Cameron Wilcox all over again.

She landed three blows before either the pervert, Lettie, or Johnny could even register what was going on, let alone react. The first was a glancing punch across the pervert's face that knocked off his glasses but did almost no damage. The second broke his nose. The third sank into his fat gut and drove the wind out of him. Cruz would later claim self-defense (Dear ol' Dad panicked and attacked her; she defended herself) and Johnny will back her up on it. Good ol' Johnny Hoyle, who always treated her like an equal and a friend, who will end up eating his own pistol over a couple of piddly dollars because of a rookie named J.D. Hart. Johnny actually stood back and let Maritza beat on the guy; it was Lettie who jumped on her and tried to stop her, Lettie who clawed at her, screaming and crying and begging in English and Spanish for Maritza not to hurt him,as if the man was something to her.

The scene was surreal. Maritza looked like a bulldog ripping into a piece of meat; Lettie looked like some yappy little purse-puppy, hopping around them in her frilly little outfit, barking helplessly, perhaps trying to nab a bite for herself.

It was only when Maritza started to slam Dear ol' Dad's head against the hood of his car that Johnny stepped in, pinned her arms behind her, and pulled her away. Dear ol' Dad sagged against his 50K sedan, sliding down the side and smearing a bloody handprint along the door as he went. He now had a broken nose, two cracked ribs, both eyes were swollen shut, and his scalp was split open in two places. Plus assorted bruises and lacerations. His face was a horror-show.

But he was conscious. Muttering. Crying. Cursing. To Maritza it sounded like the usual shit. Something about _suing your asses_. Something about _taking your badges_. Something about _police brutality_.

Maritza broke free and started kicking him.

She managed to land a couple of good ones before being pulled away again. Only this time it wasn't Johnny who saved her from elevating an assault to a murder charge; it was Lettie who yanked her around, displaying a physical strength Maritza would not have credited her with.

And guts. Lettie had to have guts to touch her like that right now, because she surely must have known that she was next on the shit-list. Lettie was in for a pounding of her own, and yet Lettie was still screaming at her, and Maritza was screaming back at her. Some of it's Spanish and some of it's English and very little of it makes any sense because they were screaming over top of each other, the same old _no-you-can't-yes-I-can_ screaming match, but the Cruz sisters are old hands and they can always find six million new ways to say the same things.

Johnny had become irrelevant. Likewise Lettie's newly tenderized client. Another RMP had appeared on the scene, and the two new boys were getting off on the spectacle. Maritza could sense them, two fat vets who had assessed the situation and promptly taken up spectator positions next to their car, settling back to watch the two hotblooded Latin ladies rip into each other - it's better than Jerry Springer and the admission's free.

She couldn't see them, but she could sense them nudging each other. Laughing. Probably hoping for her to yell something like _wha-EVA!_ or _oh no you DI'ENT! _and start pulling Lettie's hair.

But that didn't happen. Because when things get _too_ hot Letitia Cruz just curls up into a ball and plays dead. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Lettie had picked the oldest and most reliable fallback position from her bag of tricks: she started to cry, and she held her arms out to be hugged. _Poor me_, this position says. _Poor little me, I can't help myself_ -

_(I'm sorry, 'Ritza)_

_so take pity on me_.

And Maritza didn't want to touch the kid, didn't want Lettie anywhere _near_ her because there was something whitish and slimy-looking smeared all over Lettie's lips and cheeks and chin; apparently Dear ol' Dad had gotten his money's worth after all. Maritza planted her hands in the center of Lettie's chest and shoved her back on her ass, ripping her disgusting little girl's shirt down the center to reveal two sour, flat little breast-things and a ribcage that stood out in harsh, painful relief. Get yourself a set of sticks and you could play the girl's chest like a xylophone.

And Lettie just sits there on the ground, face screwed up, eyes running, arms up with the fingers wiggling, and that's why Maritza hits her, it's not the shirt or the fluffy bear _on_ the shirt or the pigtails or the semen on her face, it's the wiggling fingers, she hits her because she doesn't know what else to do -

* * *

- but scream, scream because it -

* * *

_(hurts oh please God please make it stop make it stop hurting oh please please make it stop hurting please please please)_

* * *

_- let me wake up in -_

* * *

- Noble's car. In Noble's car. Rain on the roof, pain and thirst and wasps in her head, and Noble would be back soon and she awoke with the terrible, irrefutable certainty that he would bring the police with him. The police, and Schaeffer -

_(it should be you Cruz, you up there in the burn unit with half your skin baked off)_

would be with them. Noble knew everything now, she'd told him everything, everything except Alvarez, but he would have figured that out for himself, he and Schaeffer together. They were in cahoots, those two, Noble would bring Schaeffer and the police because she'd murdered Gaines and gotten away with it and she'd murdered Alvarez and gotten away with it, when she -

* * *

- took Michael Alvarez out in the same lot where she'd shot Gaines. She put him down on his knees and put the .32 revolver to his head. She was crying. Crying and barely able to see. It was rage, the red curtain had fallen over her, but it was choked and helpless and turned in on itself, because she was about to kill this man, a man who had a hand in destroying her sister's life, but at the same time she knew he _wasn't_ that man - this was a different man. Alvarez wasn't the gangbanger who'd help put her sister on the road to junkie three-and-a-half years ago. _This_ Alvarez had been shot in a drive-by, had some kind of Great Revelation, and pledged to go straight.

And Maritza believed him, she knew he _was_ trying to do right, that he was honest and clean and had the potential to make a life for himself. He was going to school and doing well at it, he was surprisingly well-spoken and claimed to be interested in dentistry. _Dentistry_, if you could dig it. He volunteered to be a C.I. for Anti-Crime because that was just the kind of guy he was now. He'd been a gangbanger and a drug dealer and now he was a walking, talking happy ending.

And she hated him for that, for pulling himself up, for not being who she needed him to be, she hated him for not being the punk who used to smack Lettie around, who used to invite his friends over to take her for a spin ("poon-parties," he called these happy occasions), who had her name tattooed on his shoulder. That was what did it - the tattoo. There was always a trigger -

_(wiggling fingers) _

and this time it was the tattoo. Alvarez was covered in them, of course - his entire body was a four-volume written history of his days as an urban thug, and he often boasted to his police handlers that when he got rich and successful as a dentist (a _dentist_ for Christ's sake, who ever put that idea in his head?), he was going to have all those unpleasant reminders of his past lasered off. Cruz didn't give two shits about his ridiculous plans for the future and cared even less about his tattoos ... until she saw her sister's name among them. She'd never planned to kill him, just like she'd never planned to kill Gaines ... but then she saw the tattoo, _Letitia_ written in flowing, extravagant script across Alvarez's right shoulderblade ...

... and then somehow she was out in the dirt-and-gravel lot with him, Alvarez was crying and she was crying too, and he wasn't anything to her but the skell who'd helped turn Lettie into what she was. Because -

_(hell is overflowing with the righteous) _

that was who Maritza _needed_ him to be. The guy who'd introduced Lettie to the wonderful world of hard drugs. The guy who'd once taunted her by threatening to cut Lettie's head off and leave it in her bed, like the horse in _the Godfather_. The guy who'd once gotten Lettie pregnant and then walked her down to the clinic and made sure she went inside ... which she did willingly enough, because it was probably a choice between an abortion or a couple of hard punches to the gut. _That_ was who Michael Alvarez was to Maritza Cruz, right up to the moment when she cocked the hammer. The "Letitia" on his shoulder could have been _anybody,_ but to Maritza Cruz it was _her_ Letitia, and he begged right up to the end and when he saw she was serious he screamed and wailed and called for his mother, and in the end it didn't make any difference and she awoke -

* * *

- in Noble's car with a jolt and her face throbbing and her head pounding and the wasps buzzing and she could hear her own voice, she was shaking all over, cold and hot and cold and hot at the same time, there was a deep, inexplicable terror in her and she was expelling one breathless word over and over in time with each convulsion:

"Nnno. Nnno. Nnno. Nnno. Nn - "

* * *

She had to stay awake.

She had to stay awake and keep her -

_(focus focus focus focus)_

eyes -

_(!FOCUS!)_

open.

Her eyes fell shut almost immediately. There was -

* * *

- a weight on her lap now. Something heavy across her thighs.

_(water bottle? God I hope so hope so water thirsty painthirst)_

No, it couldn't be the water bottle. Too big.

The Tec-9, maybe? Maybe. She'd been doing a lot of thrashing; the gun may have gotten jounced around and ended up in her lap. She supposed she should be thankful it hadn't gone off, blown a hole in her gut, maybe shattered her _other_ arm. Wouldn't _that_ have been funny?

But the gun was still nestled down next to her right hip. This thing in her lap almost felt like a bowling ball. Would Noble have come back and put a bowling ball in her lap? The thought was just ridiculous enough to squeeze something like a shaky little chuckle out of her.

Cruz opened her eyes and looked down.

The head was recognizable as the one which had once belonged to Letitia Cruz, but at the same time it wasn't - it was Lettie's face but it was also that of a monster. The skin was gray and dotted with black, scabrous sores. The eyes were rolled up to the whites. The mouth yawned open, but it was _too_ open, the jaws had been stretched wider than what should have been anatomically possible.

And the nose and upper lip were smeared with something. Not blood. Something grayish-white.

Meth.

Of _course_ meth.

Cruz closed her eyes, _squeezed_ them closed. She did not accept this. She did not accept it because she was awake and this was real. She was in Noble's car. There was rain outside. The empty plastic bottle still lay on the driver's seat where it had fallen after she threw it at the windshield. And she was _awake_.

She tried to count off ten seconds, made it to six, and then opened her eyes again.

The head was still there.

Heart pounding, Cruz closed her eyes again. This time she counted out loud, counted in the pinched squeak of a small child, "_onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten_" leaving no pause between each, and then she opened her eyes again and the head was still there.

The eyes rolled down and looked directly into her own. Only they didn't move the way human eyes are supposed to move, which was to say they didn't twitch and flit around; they swung down with an awful, unnatural sluggishness, the movement too smooth, too slow, somehow reptilian. They were not accusatory, sad, happy, angry, anything. They were flat, inhuman things, lusterless, without sense, and Cruz heard the sound before she even realized that she was the one making it (for an awful moment she thought it was coming from the gaping mouth of the head), a high teakettle whine that started deep in her chest and then rose and rose and rose and then she threw her head back and it erupted into a scream, she was screaming, screaming, screaming, and she did not -

* * *

- hear the door of the car open, she did not hear the -

* * *

- voice say "Oh Jesus Christ" in a tone that was low and urgent and horrified; the words were there but she could make no sense of them. She was beyond sense, beyond herself, beyond anything. The car was gone, the rain was gone, this new voice was irrelevant; there were only the wasps, the wasps and the weight of the head in her lap and the sound she was making, one that could no longer rightly be called _screaming_ - she had progressed to _howling_. The sound was animal, deeply primitive, a sound that might have rolled across the plains in a time when human beings were just starting to walk upright.

The male voice again: "Awww, fucking _hell, _Cruz - "

Something made it through the complete mental whiteout, a sensation: a hand grabbing her left thigh, shaking her. The physical touch cracked the wall, and the first small flicker of coherent thought -

_(dreaming dreaming the head's a dream, dream within a dream, dream _outside_ a dream)_

broke through. There was another person with her now. A sense of an objective world beyond herself, one where no severed Lettie-head was sitting in her lap. There was a part of her conscious mind coming back online now, and it seized on the touch and the voice the way a person lost in the dark will seize on a voice for direction. It was Noble, she was sure. If he just kept talking she would -

Noble punched her in the face.

It wasn't a light punch, either - he was apparently trying to shut her up any way he could, even if it meant knocking her cold. She was getting her grip back on conscious thought, and yet she kept howling, there was a darker and far more powerful part of her brain that kept shrieking at her -

_(oh the head the head Lettie's head and the EYES the EYES) _

that it was all really real, really real, just like with the arm, the dream about the safehouse and the black and swollen arm -

Noble hit her again. Cruz's working arm lashed out - more out of reflex than spite - and her fist came up hard against something warm and soft. Noble's face.

"_OW!_ _Goddammit_!"

Good, good, that was good, let him squeal. There was a solid, three-dimensional quality to Noble's voice that wasn't there before. He was real. This time he was real.

But her mouth had run away with her. The functioning part of her mind really wasn't all that significant yet, and motor control was still off-limits. All she could see was the head, the eyes, she could feel the weight of it in her lap, and all she could do was howl.

And that was when Aaron Noble did something absolutely unconscionable. It was the only thing he _could_ do, the only thing he could think of to get this thrashing, howling woman-thing to shut up.

He placed his hand directly on Cruz's wounded shoulder, and he _squeezed_.

Something broke. She felt it very clearly. There was a muffled, squishy kind of _crunch_ as something inside her shoulder broke, or tore, or popped. The scream caught in her throat and choked off. Her eyelids flew up like window shades, eyes bugging. Her bladder let go in a warm rush. There was one eternal millisecond of blinding, white-hot pain, pain that eclipsed everything that had come before it, blanked her mind, killed away all of the sense she was just starting to get back. The car disappeared again and so did Noble. The head disappeared, the rain dwindled away to a faint murmur, and once again the world turned black.

* * *

No dreams this time. No fragmentary swill of memory and nightmare. Just blackness.

And the wasps.


	20. Chapter 11, Part II

Chapter 11

_Cruz_

II.

When she awoke she found herself slumped over on her right side against the door of the car, her head resting against something plump and soft and a bit scratchy. She opened her right eye to a slit and saw it was a red wool blanket; the same one she'd seen lying amidst the litter of books and empty cans in the back seat. He'd rolled it up and tucked it in between her head and the door as a pillow.

The car's engine wasn't running, the radio was off; they were still. Noble was still with her; she felt him shift his weight in the driver's seat and heard him utter a low, shaky sigh. She could put an easy picture with it: Noble drawing his hands wearily down over his face, the tired martyr of a crazy woman's lost cause. The man on the Great Writer's Adventure, and what a grueling Adventure it was. Noble was back with her, real and true, no doubt about it. He'd rolled up a blanket and made a pillow for her. He was trying to help her. He'd hurt her, he'd tried to yank her arm off -

_(no no that never happened did it? did it? it didn't, did it? did it?)_

but now he was trying to help her, and that was good because now he could help her with the -

_(painthirst)_

water bottle again.

"Five hours," he said finally. His voice was low and thoughtful, but with that same shaky edge it had just before he left her alone in the car. "I was gone five hours. That was about how long I thought I'd be away, right?"

Cruz said nothing.

"Had to shoot me some pool with the Ig-ster," he went on. "Lost a hundred-and-eighty bucks." He paused. "Aren't you gonna ask me how it went?"

Cruz murmured something. It was unlikely Noble understood her; she had no idea what she'd tried to say.

"I'll fill you in on the details later," he said remotely. "It's a bit on the ... uh ... complicated side."

Another pause. Another sigh.

"I could hear you a block away," he said after a moment. "You know that? I came out of the bar, and I started to cross the street, and I could hear you ... _Jesus_, Cruz, I can't even call what you were doing _freaking out_. I don't even _know_ what to call it. It was ... I've never ... I mean, I've seen people go on bad trips before, I saw one once where this guy ... he took it into his head to cut his own toes off with an electric kitchen knife. He got through three of them before the knife jammed up and he clued in to what he was doing and ... God, I thought that was the worst thing I'd ever seen, and I've seen a lot worse since then, but that just now ... that was _bloodcurdling_. My editor would kill me if I ever used that word in a book, but that's all I've got. _Bloodcurdling_. You sure have a knack for setting precedence, Cruz."

"Just shut -"

_ up and drive_, she muttered ... and realized a moment later that her voice had died halfway through, the statement finishing itself in her head. She couldn't speak. Her jaw felt like it was packed in cement, her tongue had been chewed into mulch, and she had screamed her voice away.

"You pissed yourself, did you know that?" Noble said. His tone had switched to a loud, gruff bark - the tone of a man who is deeply shaken and trying to hide it. "Big tough cop pissed in her pants. I'll bet you didn't even realize it."

Cruz didn't bother to reply.

To be perfectly truthful, however, he was right: she didn't.

"And you know what really burns me? I'm never gonna see one red cent of compensation. You've made a complete fucking mess of my car, and I damn well ought to bill you for it. And I can't. Now I've gotta deal with piss on the seat as well as blood all over the dash. Fucking _stinks_ in here. And you didn't exactly smell like a rosegarden to start with."

"Drive," she croaked. It took almost thirty seconds of concentration and gathering of will to make that one word.

"Drive?" Noble said. He sounded nonplussed, maybe a bit amused, and still very jittery. "Drive where? We're already _here_, Cruz. You were zonked out through the whole ride. Thank God." He tapped her kneecap to get her attention, staying prudently clear of her shoulder. "Look yonder. There's the place I told you about. Our hidey-hole. Number two-twenty-five."

Cruz let her blanket-pillow fall to the floor and lifted her head; that she was able to do this at all was vaguely encouraging. She knew he'd done some serious damage when he squeezed her shoulder - ripped a few sutures, most likely - and she knew she'd done some serious damage herself. She hurt all over and there was still that perpetual buzz in her head ... but she could move ... and she could think. A little, anyway.

She saw that they were no longer nestled behind the dumpster; they now appeared to be in a little suburb comprised of simple, shoeboxy single-story houses, a suburb that looked vaguely familiar to her although there was nothing terribly fetching about it, nothing that stood out. The houses were, for the most part, ill-kept dumps. Two-twenty-five itself was an outright derelict, its windows boarded up, no visible For Sale sign on the lawn.

She wondered if there were any fifteen-foot windows or antique couches inside, and -

_(we're looking at a battlefield amputation here, Two-Bags)_

shuddered.

"It's funny how things come around, isn't it?" Noble said.

Cruz turned her head very slowly to look at him; one might almost have expected to hear a rusty _screeeee_ sound coming from the tendons in her neck.

The writer was smiling at her, but it wasn't an easy smile, and it didn't touch his eyes. From what she could see (and that wasn't much) Noble looked a little on the pasty side himself. He was chewing his lower lip, his watery eyes wide and hectic.

"I say that," he continued, "because you've been to this neighborhood before. And since you don't look too capable of puzzling it out for yourself, I'll tell you - we are now only two blocks away from a certain burned-out house. A certain burned-out _meth lab_ you may have had acquaintance with in the not-too-distant past."

Cruz looked at him a moment longer. She had nothing to say to that, nothing at all, nor did she have a response for anything else he might throw at her. She put her head down again and closed her eyes.

There was a long period in which Noble didn't speak. Cruz felt herself slipping again and forced herself to -

_(focus)_

stay awake. She could keep her eyes closed, but she had to stay awake. She _had_ to.

She didn't want to see the head again. Lettie's head. Lettie's _eyes_.

_God_, no.

"Listen to that," Noble said.

"What?" she rasped.

"Just listen."

Cruz listened. Rain on the roof of the car. The eternal buzzing in her head. That was it.

No, that _wasn't_ it. There was something else. A scratchy sound, uneven, unpleasant. Her own breathing. Each intake was a labored wheeze - each expiration was undershot with a little squeak of pain.

"You hear it, don't you?" Noble said.

Cruz nodded.

"I had a car once ... about twenty-some years ago, this was. A '63 Jaguar I bought second-hand, dirt-cheap. A lemon. It ran okay for about two months and then it started making this sound. A _bad_ sound. Kind of like the sound you're making right now, Cruz. The moral of the story: two weeks later that big red Jag was in automotive heaven."

"Go," Cruz said. It was all she would offer by way of reply. All she _could_ offer.

"Go," Noble repeated wearily. "Go to hell? Go fishing? Go to Timbuktu? Go pee again? Stop me when I'm getting warm here, Two-Bags."

"Inside." She gestured out the window at number two-twenty-five. "There."

Noble didn't budge. "Did you think about what I said, Cruz? About hell, and what hell is overflowing with?"

"Just. _Go_. Noble."

"No," he said. "I want you to look at something first. I want you to - "

_(I want you to look at it the arm black bloated ROTTING)_

"- look in the mirror."

Cruz sensed him reaching up, heard the little click as he turned the rearview mirror towards her.

A black idea rose up and she fastened onto it with terrible certainty: when she looked up, she would see the same thing she saw in the dream, only instead of her arm rotting it would be her _face_, her face would be puffed up, her eyes two white milky things like poached eggs, lips peeling back from her teeth ... that made sense because her face _felt_ swollen, hot, throbbing -

Cruz's eyes snapped open.

She had to see, she had to make sure that wasn't true.

It wasn't. She was not rotting. But what she _was_ wasn't much better. Her complexion had now deepened to match the unnatural gray of her starving left hand, her lips and nostrils dark with a crust of dried blood. She licked her tongue out to try to clean some of it away and then hastily put it away again; her stomach did an ominous roll at the sight of the red, raw, chewed-up thing that appeared between her lips. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, was coming unraveled; strands were pasted to her cheeks with sweat in a way that made her think, uneasily, of long, thin cracks in her skin. A large red blotch had appeared in the white of her right eye, just below the iris, the result of a burst blood vessel. And her left cheek was already growing a nice dark bruise from where Noble had hit her.

"Just wanted you to see," he said, and there was something in his voice now that made her uneasy, even through the exhaustion and semi-delirium. "Just wanted you to see exactly what you've done to yourself, Cruz." He tapped his watch. "The time is now 4:15 PM, on the button. What time did you say you snuck out of Mercy yesterday? Around noon-ish, right? So you've been out in the world for about twenty-eight hours now. And this is what you've done to yourself. What do you think you'll look like in another twenty-eight? Or do you even expect to survive that long?"

"House."

He snorted. "You were actually a beautiful woman before this all started, you know. It's hard for me to admit that, what with you being such a sad, contemptible sack of shit, but I'm not blind. A beautiful woman with an ugly, ugly mind. Now everything matches up. The outside's just as ugly as the inside."

"_House_, Noble. _Now_."

Another long pause. Yet another sigh.

"It'll be over soon, Cruz," he said softly. "Just little further now."

Tenderness again. Tenderness from him, from _Noble_. Tenderness and comfort. She thought of him feeding her water from the bottle like a baby, thought of the future: those half-sickening, half-comical images of Noble helping her bathe, Noble spoon-feeding her soft food. _Open wide, here comes the airplane, into the hangar_! She thought of these things, thought of how low she'd fallen, and she found that there was still shame, that even now she could still feel shame, writhing in the middle of the pain like ...

... well, like maggots writhing in a rotten wound, right?

"Inside," she whispered. "Shut up ... and _go_."

Noble yanked the doorhandle up hard enough to produce a metallic squeal of protest somewhere inside the mechanism. "Righty-o, Sarge," he sighed, and started to get out of the car. Then he paused and turned to her. "Uh ... can you even walk?"

Cruz nodded. Her new trademark nod. Chin goes up, chin goes down. Three times fast.

"You sure about that?"

She did her little nod again. And that, apparently, was good enough for him; Noble all but _popped_ out of the car, skip-jogged around the front, and started up the front path of two-twenty-five, a house that was only two blocks from the burnt-out ruins of the meth-lab where Letitia Cruz had died. If, that was, she could believe anything Noble said.

She found she did. She did believe him. Because it was as he said, wasn't it? It was exactly as he said: _things come around_.

Cruz put her hand on the doorhandle and shifted in her seat.

Pain sawed through her body, the center of her head. She bit habitually into her tongue; another little chunk came off, this one about the size of a dime. This time she managed to spit it out in a stream of blood that struck the dashboard and splattered against what was already there. More mess for Noble to clean up. If somebody walked by, if somebody looked in the window and saw the blood on the dash, they'd call the cops for sure.

She should probably call him back and tell him that.

And another thing: she hadn't asked him for water. She needed water before she could get up and walk.

Oh, let's just be honest here: she didn't want to have to _get up and walk_ at all.

And yet she had to. She had no choice. Noble obviously wasn't going to help her; he wouldn't even open the door for her. She had nobody to rely on but herself.

She had to keep going.

She had to move.

Instead, Cruz lowered her head and put her remaining hand over her eyes, in pain from head to toe, top to bottom, her shoulder full of jagged glass, that dull, liquid pain pulsing behind her nose and eyes and forehead, her tongue raw and slick and bleeding down the back of her throat, the taste in her mouth foul beyond description.

How could she move in all of that? How could she be expected to bear up under all of that? _How_?

And the wasps. Oh, _God_, the wasps in her head.

Five minutes. To be free of this just for five minutes. She would give anything. Anything at all.

_Even Buford?_ a little voice in her head asked immediately. It was grim, without irony, without identity. _Would you throw in the towel and give this all up? _

She squeezed her eyes shut and uttered a single, helpless dry-sob, kneading her forehead, _pulling_ at it, as if trying physically to reach in and draw all of it out of her head, everything, all of it, pull it all out and throw it away, but she couldn't because it was all she had, it was all she had left. She was walking a tightrope over an abyss - there was this or there was nothing, just the plunge into whatever lay below, prison or a pine box. Richard Buford was walking around a free man, Richard Buford was breathing the air and living free, and her sister was dead because of him, and her own life was gone, everything she'd done was undone, and if she stopped now then Buford would win. She would be handing over what was left of her life to him.

Buford would win. And that could never be allowed to stand.

_Never. _

Cruz opened the car door, gasping as the rain washed in and started soaking her all over again.

That was the easy part. Now came the hard part. She'd been off her feet since the puking fit, and that was at least a couple of -

_(?hours days months years?)_

ago. She put her good hand on the doorframe and helped herself to sit up, then swung her legs out, feet touching down on the pavement.

"Hustle it up, Cruz!" Noble called. He was now standing at the foot of two-twenty-five's front steps. "If you can walk, then walk! I'm not carrying you!"

Cruz somehow managed to get out of the car and up on her feet; she did not know exactly how. It was harder this time, much harder than it had been at Mercy. But she did it.

Several things happened, all of them predictable: her legs shook, her head spun, her stomach swapped places with her heart. She draped her good arm over the open door of the car and hung on - it wasn't a hurricane by any stretch but the storm had definitely upped the ante; the wind hammered at her, driving the rain against her face with enough force to sting.

She did well enough against the elements, but she lost the battle with her stomach. She leaned over and vomited again, a thin, brackish stew of bile and saliva and the blood she'd been swallowing as she chewed away at her tongue. She felt her equilibrium start to list to the right and literally held onto the door for dear life. If she fell, she'd never get up. She knew that.

She closed her eyes and waited for it to pass, turning her face to the rain and opening her mouth, drinking in what she could.

This was hell. She was in hell.

She thought of Lettie on the ski slope. Thought of rolling around in the snow with her, stuffing handfuls of it down each other's backs, squealing and giggling like they were both six years old.

She held the image. Drew strength from it.

Noble was going to fix her up. Get her some dope. Help her get better. And then help her get Buford.

She opened her eyes and slammed the door, using the momentum to push off from the car and get herself moving. She tottered along two-twenty-five's front path, looking like an extra from a zombie movie who'd wandered away from the set in full makeup and still in character. She locked her eyes on Noble. He was her anchor, for better or for worse, the only thing she could see through the downpour, the only thing left in the world the least bit sane. So she kept her eyes on him, and she did not see the motorcycle that was parked in the driveway, just barely visible around the right side of the house.

What she saw was blue fire. The pain and the thirst and the wasps in her head had been joined by something new: a kind of shimmering blue corona around the edges of her vision. Blue fire.

Noble stood waiting patiently for her in the middle of it, getting soaked in the downpour, not minding a bit. Noble, who would help her get to Buford, and she would kill Buford, and Lettie would finally be able to rest, and then it would all be over, it would all be gone. She wouldn't have to see it anymore or think about it anymore. It would all be _gone_. She wouldn't have to think about the hospital anymore, she wouldn't have to think about the alley, or catching Lettie hooking in her pink kiddie outfit, or that Holland son of a bitch tricking Lettie into doing his gang-bang video and then beating her senseless with his All-American buddies. She wouldn't have to think about all the trips to rehab, the periods of shaky recovery afterwards, the narc-anon meetings and the tearful hugs and all the broken promises, hers and Lettie's both. She wouldn't have to think about Gaines or Alvarez anymore, or Boscorelli or Yokas or Noble or Schaeffer or anybody, _any_ of it.

Because she would have made up for it all. She would have made it right.

Cruz shuffled along the path, legs carrying her inexorably forward though she was exhausted and wet and thirsty and dying on her feet and every step was agony, almost as if she were being propelled by some other hand, some malignant external force that was driving her along for its own sick amusement. Perhaps that same grim and pitiless God that kept throwing her sister back in her face, that kept insisting on reminding her of her obligations.

_He's gonna fix me up_, she thought again, and even now, even after everything she'd come through, she could still believe this, right through to the core of her psyche. Maybe not in spite of what she'd gone through but because of it. _He's gonna fix me up, get me some dope, everything's gonna be fine, everything will turn out okay, just a bad patch, I'll get over it, he'll help me get better and then I'll get Buford._

And she believed it. She believed it all.

Right up to the very end, Maritza Cruz believed it completely.


	21. Chapter 12: Bosco

I know I've said this before, but the wait between now and the next update won't be as long - I think I can say it truthfully this time ;) The story's nearly finished now - this chapter, another about the same length, a very short chapter after that, and the epilogue. Plus, before I put the epilogue up I'll probably do a final overall edit, but it won't be the major overhaul I did back in December '04 - it'll just be to give the story a final trim and add some lingering details learned about Cruz just before the show went off the air, such as her sister's involvement in Santeria. Beyond that, we're nearly done ...

So let's get on with it.

* * *

Chapter 12

_Bosco_

A standoff, seen from the circling bird's-eye view of a news chopper:

Aaron Noble's car (_one_ of Aaron Noble's cars; he owns at least six, including a restored 1926 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost he probably paid through the nose for and probably wouldn't dare actually drive anyway) sits alone and isolated right in the middle of what should be a busy intersection and isn't. There are no other cars on the street. No people in sight, either. The police have erected roadblocks and cleared away the rubberneckers. This is a serious situation. Serious as in _grave_.

The scene revolves slowly as the helicopter tracks in lazy circles. Certain eagle-eyed viewers might have already noted - as the reporters soon will - that there actually appears to be the vague suggestion of activity in the car. Heads and hands can be seen bobbing erratically around inside. As if, say, a heated argument might be taking place between the individual in the passenger seat (_perp_) and the individual in the driver's seat (_hostage_).

Though barely visible, the individual in the passenger seat (_perp_) appears to have a fall of long, dark hair.

Certain _other_ eagle-eyed viewers - say, those who have had professional experience in similar matters - know that while everybody wants a peaceful outcome, this doesn't look like the sort of situation that has "peaceful" written anywhere on it or near it. A fully tooled-up ESU team, brandishing MP5 sub machineguns and riot shields, will probably be holding position somewhere off camera, waiting for the Green Light. Likewise the sharpshooters who may be taking up position, or may be in position already. The Green Light will come if things look like they're going to go nuclear and the risks of action outweigh the risks of inaction. This is a bad situation, remember. _Bad_. The occupant in the passenger seat (_perp_) is known to police (in a manner of speaking!), but _not_ known for keeping a cool head, and now he's -

(or perhaps it's _she's_)

- been cornered. In a car, no less. And a vehicle complicates matters in a way a simple house-standoff would not. The occupant in the passenger seat (_perp_) could order the occupant in the driver's seat (_hostage_) to do something unwise, such as try to move the car, or something purely insane, such as ram one of the roadblocks or try to run down a uniformed officer. Complicating matters further: said occupant in the driver's seat (_hostage_) happens to be somebody a bit on the _famous_ side. A popular, liberal-minded crime writer and a respected journalist, to be exact. Nobody wants to see the expensively educated brain responsible for all those stimulating books (not to mention those stimulating book _sales_) painting the inside of his own car's windows. Certainly not on national television; if viewers would care to direct their eyes to the lower left, they will notice the distinctive "CNN" logo tucked away down in the corner.

It's Live TV at its most intense, and it's possible that hours have already passed. The mood is one of _extreme _tension; everyone knows that this can't go on much longer. That it can't be _allowed_ to go on much longer. Even the reporters - both the anonymous grunts in the news chopper and the big household-name generals back in the newsroom - are mostly silent, holding their collective breath, probably saving their smart remarks for when things look like they're coming to a head.

And suddenly, it happens with no warning - _things come to a head_!

Down on the ground, the driver's side door of the car flies open. A figure - male, by the look of him - emerges and bolts across the intersection; he appears middle-aged but he moves with the preternatural speed of a man who expects to have to outrun a volley of bullets at any given moment.

He disappears behind one of the roadblocks and out of sight, presumably absorbed into the protective network of police officers. Whether his escape was opportunistic or if his captor just let him go ... who knows?

And who cares? Not ESU, that's for sure: with the hostage safe, the team immediately moves in, approaching the passenger side of the car in tight, cautious formation, shields and weapons raised.

Another surprise: now the _passenger_ door opens. A second figure emerges. Only instead of following the other's example by trying to run, this figure goes the opposite route, boldly approaching the ESU team at what appears to be an almost leisurely pace. This individual is unmistakably female, and she does indeed appear to have a fall of long, dark hair.

The camera's operator seems a bit startled - the picture jiggles slightly - but he keeps filming, and the reporters are really cawing and jabbering now. Not one word of it is worth transcribing; the real question is not _what_ they're saying but rather _why_ they're getting so worked up.

The figure is holding a gun. _That's_ why they're so worked up.

The figure is the perp, and the perp is Maritza Cruz, the former Anti-Crime Sergeant out of the NYPD's Fifty-Fifth Precinct. She is holding what looks like a handgun, and she's aiming it right at the ESU team. She has not fired a shot, and there are certain members of the audience who know that she almost certainly won't. Whatever else might be wrong with her, Cruz is not and never was a cop-killer. Make no mistake about that.

Which can only mean that she's aiming a gun at a heavily armed ESU team with absolutely no intention of using it. The ESU guys don't know that, of course, and Maritza Cruz knows they _can't_ know that, but they don't know that she knows that they don't know that (whew!), and that's exactly what she's counting on. She wants them to think that she's going to try to kill them, try to shoot her way out of the stalemate or take a few of 'em down with her, and the result is exactly what one might expect.

What follows will be edited in later broadcasts for purposes of taste and simple human decency.

There is a series of flat, completely undramatic _pop-pop-pops_. Puffs of what appear to be smoke appear on the female figure in front of them. She jerks spastically; her clothes seem to ripple and jump as well, as if she's being struck by something or multiple somethings, in multiple places. The figure collapses, the pistol falling out of her hand. The chopper continues to circle. Blood begins to spread around the perp on the ground as the ESU team moves in to secure her. Doesn't matter that she probably has about fifteen rounds in her and will certainly be very, very dead; gotta makes sure she stays that way. Gotta assume she's still a threat. Gotta cuff the corpse. Procedure.

Aaron Noble is safe. So's his car, for what that's worth. And the perp is down.

And so concludes Mad-Dog Cruz's Last Stand (televised Live and Unedited for the last time ever). We hope you enjoyed the show.

* * *

Of course the details were all wrong. It was another of his little internal film strips and it was perhaps the most vivid yet, because it was not derived from memory this time; this one was a Maurice Boscorelli Original. But there were a lot of blank spots, gaps that his mind had to fill in with placeholders, and some of them - like the car - were actually quite ridiculous. In this theoretical version of events, Noble's car was the Silver Ghost, and Cruz appeared healthy when she emerged from the passenger side; her left arm appeared undamaged and she was dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing the night Faith shot her.

None of which mattered. The entire scenario was still too lifelike, too three-dimensional, writing itself into being in a way that was spontaneous and completely involuntary, the product of a new and morbid kind of creativity Bosco never would have guessed himself capable of. It was exactly as Brian O'Malley had described it: imagery diluted from everything he'd witnessed or been party to in the course of his career, along with what he'd watched passively, as a member of this brave new world of televised car chases and hostage standoffs and police shootouts. Live and Unedited for public consumption.

_Mad-Dog Cruz's Last Stand. _Right?

Yeah, stick with that one. It was one of those bad jokes that should have sounded ridiculous and somehow didn't. Probably because it just connected too well to that image of Cruz standing in the middle of a street with a gun, making sure all eyes were on her, daring them to do it.

_This isn't gonna be like that, though. No. It won't go down like that. It _won't

No, no, no, it _couldn't_ happen, could it? Sure, just keep believing that. And then look at Exhibit A, Glen Hobart. Hobart in his chair in his sweatpants and his wifebeater undershirt. And then ol' Boscorelli comes in to arrest him and starts jawing at him: _come on, Glen, let's just take a ride down to the station, just us two guys, just us two buddies_, trying to make the whole thing sound like a drive to the beach, too fucking stupid to see that the man in front of him had finally broken.

And then they're on the roof.

And then Bosco's own sidearm is used as the catalyst for the same kind of situation. Suicide by Cop.

_No. This time it's different. _

Oooh, such _conviction_ in that thought! Such _confidence_! How was it so different? If Hobart could do it, then Cruz _certainly_ could. Hobart had had to be given that one last little nudge to send him over the edge. Cruz had probably been halfway there already, waving her gun and threatening Faith and yelling about how cops had to do what cops had to do. And that was _before_ Schaeffer entered the picture and showed her the full scope of her situation. Cruz was just one of those people who had self-destruction written all over them.

And by the way, what _would_ she have done? Hmm? That was still a good question - a tired oldie but still a goodie. What would Cruz _really_ have done that night if Faith had refused to hand over Noble's gun? Bosco had called it bluff and bluster. Cruz being Cruz. And like a good many other things, he wasn't so certain about it now.

And at this point, what did she have left? Why, _nothing_. If Schaeffer really did have as much on her as he said he did, then she had nothing to go back to, nothing to lose. Two suspects shot in cold blood ... that was bad business. Bosco still didn't want to believe Schaeffer could really connect her to two murders, but he didn't think the rat son of a bitch had lied just to impress him.

Cruz was going to die. They would find her, and when they did she'd do something to intentionally force their hand, and they would kill her. It might not look anything like his little mind-movie, but it would still be on his head. It would be Hobart all over again. Hobart had needed that one last little push, and Bosco had been the one who gave it to him. Glen had been on the verge, and Bosco had walked right into his apartment and handed the man his method.

And Noble was in the middle of this one. Remember that - any way you sliced it, _Aaron Noble_ was in the middle of this. Even after things settled down, even when the talking heads tired of the story, the world would be destined to hear about _Mad-Dog Cruz's Last Stand_ for years to come, because her famous hostage was just the kind of guy who would have to immortalize the whole thing in the printed word. So really, couldn't anyone see just how fucking _plausible_ it all was?

Mad-Dog Cruz.

Jesus Christ, he was actually starting to think of her like that. "Mad-Dog Cruz." All the time now.

Well, why not? It held a certain, catchy kind of charm, didn't it? Maybe they'd sell Mad-Dog merchandise when the whole thing was over. Little Mad-Dog dolls, maybe. Sure! Pull the string in her back and she plays back one of six different pre-recorded phrases, which might include swearing vengeance against Richard Buford, threatening to plant evidence, and spewing fanatical, self-righteous warrior-philosophy, I.E. "Cops Need to Do Whatever it Takes!" And there's more! Not only does she have dramatic Kung Fu Action (right arm only), if you squeeze her, she foams at the mouth! And you don't even want to fucking _know_ what happens when you touch her ... you know ... _special area_.

_Get a grip. Now. Just get a fucking grip._

Oh, but this was such _good_ stuff! Why get a grip?

_Because it's _useless_, that's why! Because this is a bunch of useless bullshit!_

And because his chest was tightening up. His chest had been tightening up throughout the whole little filmstrip and now, all at once, he realized he couldn't draw breath at all. And because he didn't have Faith handy to suggest that it might feel like _steel straps_, he thought of the sensation in more brutal terms; he thought of being shot in the chest. Of being _lung_-shot, writhing on the ground trying to get his breath and covered in blood because he'd been lung-shot, hearing John Sullivan's voice (from somewhere above, like the voice of God) calmly stating that it wasn't blood at all but only red dye, red dye from one of the bank's explosive anti-theft dye-packs.

He wondered why the hell he would think of that - right _now,_ of all times - even though he knew the answer already. It was because what happened to him that day with the dye-pack was happening again, right now.

It was because, an hour after driving away from the Bridgeview Hotel, he was having a panic attack.

* * *

It caught him behind the wheel of his car, and it was only blind luck that traffic was relatively thin - otherwise all of his problems might have been quickly and unceremoniously solved in yet another spectacular crash, a multi-car pileup in the great tradition of the nitrous-packed rolling bomb that killed Alex Taylor.

He felt himself losing it and he knew he had to stop, get off the road ASAP, but his fine motor control was already gone and he overcompensated, twisting the steering wheel sharply to the right. The Mustang veered, skidded on the rain-slick pavement, and came within an ace of jumping the curb. His foot stamped convulsively at the brake pedal, missed twice, then hit on the third try. The car continued to skid, then caught and shuddered to a stop, finishing up canted at a drunken angle by the curb, back end still hanging out into the street.

Someone leaned on the horn and shot around him with an indignant squeal of rubber.

Bosco didn't hear it. He had sagged against the steering column the second he knew he was safe, head down, forehead pressed against the cool leather of the wheel, shaking all over, pulling great ragged breaths down a throat that felt like it had shrunk to a pinhole and into a chest that felt like it was being brutally compressed by some invisible outside force. He tried to remember if it had ever been like this before and couldn't do it. That day the dye-pack blew up in his face - had it been this bad or not _as_ bad or had it been _worse_? It seemed important to remember, important to measure and categorize it, the way inconsequential and irrational things always seem important in the grip of hysteria.

In the end it didn't matter how bad it was. In the end he didn't give a flying fuck out a high window how bad it was. He'd thought it was a heart attack the last time it happened and maybe this time it really was; his heart seemed to have turned into a spastic lump of jelly that was rubberbanding its way around his chest, like one of those Superballs he and Mikey used to find (and fight over) in their breakfast cereal.

Superballs.

Bosco uttered a high, yattering chuckle. Yeah, he remembered those. Things could be damn near lethal, once you got 'em bouncing. Mikey used to peg the little fuckers right at him, too, lucky he'd never lost an eye, lucky _neither _of them had lost an eye, they'd take them to the old fort where they used to hide when their Pop was home and things were bad and they'd throw them around -

_They're going to kill her. She'll make them do it. She'll push them, just like she pushed Faith that night. That might be the whole point - it might not be Buford at all. Maybe what she really _wants_ are the choppers and the reporters and the ESU team._

No. No more of that. He was thinking about Superballs now. He was sticking with Superballs, because it was something that had nothing to do with _now_. Focus on that, think about that, Superballs and the old fort and his brother Mikey.

_Right, exactly - Mikey. Like her sister, right? Like Lettie Cruz. So much alike, you and 'Ritza, both of you with screw-ups for siblings, and now both of you screw-ups. There's a bond there. A _link_. You saw it. And now it just keeps coming back on you, doesn't it? _

_So what are you waiting for? Go ahead. _

_Go ahead and take another peek. _

Wheezing now, Bosco began to grope the left front pocket of his jacket, as if there was something in there that his life depended on ... which, the voice in his head was now insisting, there was. After some useless, ridiculous flailing he managed to control his hand long enough to retrieve a tattered piece of paper, which he brought out and held up to eye-level.

Letitia Cruz on the left. Grinning.

Maritza on the right. _Not_ grinning. Just that funny little smirk, the one that didn't touch her eyes and showed none of her teeth, as if she knew she should be smiling for the camera but didn't quite know what she was supposed to be smiling _about_.

The photograph really was real, and looking at it was like taking a bizarre kind of Communion. He would examine it four more times before the day was out, and each time he would send his hand into his jacket convinced that it would come up empty, that he would find nothing but a few little blue twists of pocket-lint, maybe a few loose coins ... but no photograph.

Then his fingers would touch it and confirm that yes, there _was_ a photograph in his pocket, whereupon he would become convinced that it wasn't _the_ photograph, that once he drew it out and looked at it, it would show some entirely different scene. Somebody's lost baby picture, perhaps. Maybe a tourist's shot of the Empire State Building (or perhaps the pretty little Bridgeview Hotel), dropped in the haste to flag down a cab.

In other words, Bosco remained convinced that he was crazy and the damn thing was some kind of hallucination.

But then he would look at the picture and he would see that it was real, and he would hear Cruz's voice in his head, he would hear her say _this was taken on a ski trip three years ago_ and he would see her in his mind's eye the way she was that night. In her bathrobe, hair damp and hanging limp in her eyes, skin stippled with moisture. Grieving, but charged with a reluctant (and probably desperate) kind of sexuality.

Bosco stuffed the snapshot back into his pocket, discovered that he could breathe again, and began gulping air.

Okay. He was okay now. No problem. Considering everything he'd gone through, he'd probably been overdue for an anxiety attack, and compared to the some of the low points he'd hit in the last forty-eight hours or so, a little breathing difficulty was pretty tame. And now it was done and out of the way. Call it a token thing.

But he could still feel it. He'd been feeling it ever since he'd left that goddam hotel - that driving sense of responsibility, enormous, undeniable. And all if it held in that one little scrap of paper in his pocket.

He'd never held any belief in supernatural destiny. For all the thought he'd poured into questions of Fate over the past couple of days, the basic core of his worldview was still pretty much intact; most of his philosophizing had come out of despair, self-pity, and alcohol. But finding that photograph ... he was not so set in his ways that he could just look past something like that, call it coincidence, and deny that finding the thing where and when he did fit the circumstances perfectly, that it was something that just felt too much like a kick in the ass. Fate was not mystical - Fate was _geometrical_. Fate traced neatly intersecting lines, lines drawn with impeccable timing and precision. Fate was mathematically exact, like those awful, brain-scrambling math problems from elementary school - _if Jimmy's train leaves his station at 3:00 PM traveling at eighty miles an hour, and Janey's train leaves _her_ station at 4:00 traveling at thirty miles an hour, what time will the fiery crash happen_?

The scratch on the side of his car led to the laughing fit. The laughing fit led to sitting down on the bench. And sitting down on the bench led him almost directly to Cruz. Call it Fate's Geometry.

As if (and he did _hate_ how this sounded) that snapshot on the street was _meant_ to be found.

As if (God help us all!) he was _supposed_ to save Cruz.

_Right, _he thought numbly, still shaking, still a bit queasy._ I'd just duck into a phonebooth, but goddammit, wouldn't ya know - it looks like I left my blue tights at home. _

And that was the right way to look at it. Make it into a joke. It was nothing but a false sense of responsibility brought on by a simple coincidence -

_(yeah, that's right, you heard me - just a simple coincidence, no more than that, so stick the philosophizing up your ass, Confucius)_

- one he tried to deny by deliberately wasting time. He'd left the Bridgeview at about 10:40 and had been on the move for just a little under an hour now - time which, to the best of his recollection, had been spent running; running from himself, running from thoughts of Cruz, running in the same punch-drunk circles he'd found himself in after he'd left Faith's. Tracing brainless patterns through and around his little corner of the city, seeing the same buildings, the same streetcorners, the same traffic lights, again and again. Interspersed with some feeble attempts at routine. He stopped once for gas - even though the tank was three-quarters full - bought a Mr. Big bar while he paid for it, and when the girl behind the counter flirted with him, he did his best to flirt back. As if everything was normal. As if it was just another day.

As if he wasn't scared out of his mind. Because she was still there, wasn't she? No matter where he went, she was always there. And not just in his pocket, either - she literally seemed to be _everywhere_.

Fifteen minutes ago, while stopped at one of those traffic lights, Bosco happened to cast an idle glance to his right. He regretted it instantly. There was a _Times_ newspaper box standing on the corner, displaying the Saturday edition, hot off the presses. The headline read: _ON THE RUN? COP AT CENTER OF CORRUPTION PROBE MISSING_. Underneath was a photograph of Cruz that took up most of the front page. Bosco was wearily dismayed - but not at all surprised - to see that it was the same shot they'd used on the news last night: the black-and-white file photo where she looked like a bloodthirsty savage straight out of the darkest Jungle Primeval. Somehow it looked even worse on newsprint; the half-open sneer on her mouth, the tense, threatening posture, the wild, feral eyes, and the blood on her cheeks and forehead (hers or someone else's, he still couldn't tell), which to Bosco looked more like stripes of war paint than ever.

He'd stared at the picture in a morbid, watching-a-car-accident kind of trance until the light turned green and somebody behind him starting honking, wondering half-seriously if small children cried and clung a little closer to Mommy when they passed the paper box and saw Maritza -

_(Mad Dog) _

- Cruz snarling back at them. She really did look like a monster.

And then, for some godforsaken reason, Bosco had slipped out of his car (ignoring both the rain and the profanity directed at him from the cars stuck behind him) and bought a copy of the paper. He did not know exactly why he'd done this; the idea of actually _reading_ the article terrified him.

Why, it terrified him almost as much as the photograph in his pocket.

Knowing it was a bad idea, knowing it was probably the worst thing he could do, Bosco withdrew the paper, which he'd stuffed under the passenger seat. He also withdrew his Mr. Big bar and unwrapped it as he fanned the paper out, again trying stupidly for that sense of _normal_, trying to just be a man readin' his morning paper, just a man eatin' a chocolate bar and readin' his paper as he sat in his illegally parked car in a rainstorm.

He winced again as he looked at the front page, and he had to resist the insane urge to take out his photograph (_Cruz's_ photograph) and hold it up next to the one on the paper.

The article was long - too long for him to be bothered reading in his present state of mind. He skimmed it, eating the chocolate bar as he went, stopping only when words or phrases jumped out at him.

..._ spokesman Paul Mallory will not specify the exact nature of the charges Cruz faces, but sources close to the NYPD ..._

_Sources, _Bosco thought sourly, taking an almost vicious bite out of the Mr. Big. _Five hundred dollars says "sources" translates to "Schaeffer." _

Resuming from the same line:

_... sources close to the NYPD have hinted that she may be facing felony murder charges in a number of unsolved execution-style killings ..._

So it was out. The "hint" would probably be confirmed by tomorrow. Bosco skimmed on, wondering sickly if "a number of" unsolved killings meant that Schaeffer had uncovered more than two.

_... despite reports that Cruz may have been responsible for carrying out executions on suspected drug dealers, Mallory insists that she poses no threat to the community ..._

Bosco sniffed derisively. Mallory. Poor bastard. PR must be the worst fucking job in the whole Department. Parrotting the same shit to the Press, over and over, day after day.

Bosco kept skimming, but it was starting to become pretty clear that the article was just more of the same. The same lines, the same strained placations from Mallory, the same wild speculations from the press. It wasn't -

_... romantic involvement with Aaron Noble ..._

Bosco stopped skimming at once. He also stopped chewing, his mouth full of melting chocolate and peanuts as he went back and read the whole line:

_... When asked if Cruz had any romantic involvement with Aaron Noble, Mallory refused to comment ..._

Bosco almost spewed the mouthful of Mr. Big all over the windshield in front of him. _Romantic_ involvement? Cruz and Noble? Were they fucking insane?

No. No, not insane. Just jumping at shadows. And if they were so off the mark as to think Cruz and Noble had been banging each other, Bosco could only imagine how much else they had wrong.

He swallowed his mouthful of chocolate and re-folded the paper, catching another eyeful of that nasty shot of Cruz with her teeth bared. That was what it was all about, right there - shock value first, truth second. Take a little kernel of rumor and run with it and see where it takes you. He wondered if that picture on the front page had been purposely retouched. Cruz had come equipped with an almost sinister sort of beauty, dark and intense and well-suited to both her personality and her current role as New York's new boogey-woman. But a few discreet little strokes of a PhotoShop airbrush couldn't hurt. Add some dark bags under her eyes, brighten her teeth to enhance the sneer, make the blood/war paint stand out a bit more, and she could look even more ferocious. Maritza becomes Mad-Dog. Lock your doors, turn off your lights, batten down your hatches.

Except _they_ wouldn't call her Mad-Dog. Sooner or later the "Two-Bags" name would make its way to the press, and that would be what they'd christen her. And the feeding frenzy would just go on and on even after it was all over, even after she was dead, and when she died it would be because of him, because of -

Bosco grabbed the steering wheel and squeezed, squeezed hard, until he felt the tendons in his hands starting to seize up. This was just exactly how it worked, wasn't it? This was exactly how it got you. _Exactly_. Your mind gets to running in circles. And before you know it, _you're_ running in circles.

Just the way O'Malley said.

_You've got O'Malley on the brain. _

Yes, he did. With good reason. He was pretty much resigned to the fact that he'd be spending a lot of his immediate future on O'Malley's couch.

_So what do you think he'd say now? About the photograph, for example? The one in your _pocket_, that is - not the one on the front page of the _Times_. What do you think he'd say about your little superhero complex? Assuming you were back on his boat with him and this was a paid therapy session? _

Bosco was pretty sure O'Malley would tell him what he already knew - that most of this was really about Hobart. O'Malley would say that Bosco wanted to get to Cruz first because he wanted to redeemhimself for what happened on that rooftop over a year ago, for allowing Glen to get hold of his gun and drag him up there like some dumb fucking rookie in a bad cop movie. O'Malley would probably call it something like "projection," or an "irrational need for absolution." And then O'Malley would tell him that absolution wasn't necessary, because none of it had been Bosco's fault, and to apply Hobart to this situation was unhealthy. Maybe even dangerous.

O'Malley might also suggest that Bosco still cared about Cruz. Which was to say, as a _woman_. O'Malley might suggest that was why Bosco had initially turned his wrath on Faith; that seeing Cruz hurt had crippled his attempt to break away from her, stirring up old - and dangerous - feelings. O'Malley would say that what he felt about Cruz now was nothing more than a purely _male_ reaction, an exquisitely stupid kind of pity. There is a visceral reaction in seeing a woman you cared about in pain. A violent, simian protectiveness comes over you. You want to go to her and hold her and comfort her. Cruz had had a profound effect on him, professionally, sexually, emotionally. O'Malley would say that he was still feeling the aftershocks.

But O'Malley wasn't here, was he?

The photograph in his pocket, however, was. And what the photograph came down to was grief. What Cruz was doing now was something that went beyond her usual pigheaded drive to win at all costs; if it were anything else, if it were any_one_ else but Richard Buford, if her sister were still alive and being put through the wringer in a rehab program somewhere, Bosco was convinced Cruz would still be lying in her bed at Mercy, waiting out the time until she was well enough to be transferred to a prison infirmary.

But she wasn't waiting around - her grief had taken her. Her grief was why she'd started sleeping with him, her grief was why she had become obsessed with Noble, her grief was why she'd wanted so badly climb the ladder right to the very top, taking the job of catching Buford entirely on her own shoulders.

Bosco thought that he was, at last, starting to understand her.

The media obviously did not, and it was safe bet that the police didn't either. Bosco supposed he couldn't blame them. He'd spent more time with her over the last eight months than anyone else, both on the job and off, and he'd basically gotten nowhere. All that time spent hoping in vain for a bond to form, all that time spent hoping that the common thread of Lettie and Mikey might bring them closer together. And always she'd kept that barrier between them, always she'd kept him out, kept the relationship impersonal. And that, ironically, was what offered him this sudden insight into her character; she thought she didn't need anybody. It was simple, so simple he'd missed it: she honestly thought she could take the world on all by herself. Which was what she was doing now, no more and no less. For all her efforts at keeping him out, he might be the only person on Earth who truly understood her at this point ... and as deluded as it might sound, that made him the only person qualified to deal with her.

_So now you're a profiler_. _She's your prey and you're smelling her droppings. _

Right. Droppings like the photograph. Everything came back to that photograph. If his mind was running in circles, then the photograph was the axis on which it was spinning. It was his focal point. It _was_ a kick in the ass. And Bosco knew it would just keep pressing on him, nagging at him, making the back of his neck prickle, unless he did something about it. Unless he did something _with_ it. It was like the fucking thing was _alive_, wriggling in his pocket, trying to get him to acknowledge it and all the issues it raised.

Bosco drew it out and looked at it again. And felt the same sensations slip over him - uncertainty, cold unreality, fear, something almost like awe. It was like hitting on some mild but very enticing drug.

He put it away quickly.

Cruz was sick. She was delusional. She believed she was going to find and execute Richard Buford, because she felt a terrific, crushing responsibility to avenge her sister.

_And now you're starting to feel a terrific, crushing responsibility to save her. Right?_

Bosco exhaled. He loosened his grip on the wheel and let his hands fall into his lap.

To answer that question: Yes.

Yes he did.

Worse, he was starting to believe he could really do it.

_In that case, you'd better be careful. Sounds like Lettie and Mikey might not be the only thing you and Cruz have in common. You're obviously both suffering serious fucking Messiah complexes._

Bosco smiled tightly. No Messiah complexes here. He was a realist, not a dreamer. Always had been. And nothing had changed.

So, looking at it realistically, he could break his predicament down to three basic options:

_One_: Do nothing. Listen to the voice of reason and go home. Watch the news. Wait for Cruz to be apprehended by those who were actually being paid to do it. The pro was that he would be able to wash his hands of the whole thing. The con was that, having done that, he would suffer the full weight of the guilt if Cruz came to a bad end.

_Two_: Take Cruz's photograph to the Five-Five and talk to Lieutenant Swersky. Hand Swersky the picture and his theory: that Cruz might be holding Aaron Noble hostage. After that ... well, he'd just have to stand back and let Swersky do what he would with the information, wouldn't he? Swersky wasn't apt to deputize him on the spot, was he? Which led right back to that first path again; he would end up having to wait for the cops to do their thing, watching the outcome from the sidelines, praying it went smoothly.

And then of course there was ...

_Three_: Figure out a way to find Cruz on his own. Which would be next to impossible. Not only because he had no real idea of where she might have gone after the Bridgeview, but because it would require a degree of coolheaded thought he knew he probably wasn't capable of.

And yet that was the one he kept coming back to. He could not stand idly by, he could not just sit back and do nothing. He couldn't do it, but he couldn't _not_ do it, and the reasons were equally sound in both cases. Circular thinking. Circular logic.

_Of course it could already be over. Ever think of that, genius? If they think Noble and Cruz were "romantically involved," they might already be looking for him. Or you might be totally wrong about Noble. Or she might be caught already. She probably _has_ been caught already._

Very true. But he still had to work from the assumption that it _wasn't_ true, that she was still out there. He had to work with what he knew. The photograph demanded it.

"I have to," he said softly, and hearing himself speak the thought aloud seemed to make it stick.

* * *

This was what he had:

He believed that Cruz was trying to assassinate Richard Buford - check. He believed that she had carjacked Aaron Noble and taken him against his will - check. He based this belief on: A). The photograph he'd found across the street from the Bridgeview Hotel, and the emotional significance it held for Cruz, and B). The fact that one of the hotel's owners had heard a heated argument in the parking lot between a man and a woman.

He believed that Cruz was holding the writer hostage, with the intention of forcing him to lead her to Richard Buford.

Next: consider all the variables. Cruz's injury - that was the biggie. She would have certain pressing medical needs, not the least of which was pain management. Bosco imagined her wound would also require regular dressing changes, and would probably need to be washed to prevent infection. The bones in her shoulder hadn't been properly fixed yet - what she had was a patch-job that was supposed to hold her until the real reconstruction could begin. In the early hours after The Shooting (which had, at last, started to capitalize itself in his head) Bosco had heard the words _nerve damage _thrown around, so he assumed her left arm had reduced or nonexistent function. All of that together meant her movements would probably be severely limited.

Add to that her newfound pseudo-celebrity - she was a marked woman, made even easier to spot by her injury.

Now add the other day-to-day trivialities, stuff like eating, sleeping, bathroom breaks. Hard enough to take care of that stuff when you were stuck with a hostage; harder still when you were nursing a serious and virtually untreated wound. She and Noble would need a place to stay, wouldn't they? Somewhere to lie low.

Which led back to the million-dollar question: why would Aaron Noble, a grown man, _allow_ himself to be kidnapped by a debilitated woman half his size, and then allow her to put him on a leash? He was pushing fifty and he didn't exactly look like he wasted his life in the gym, but he wasn't _helpless_ - he was a burly guy and Cruz wouldn't be much of a physical threat to him, even if she _was_ carrying a gun. So why would he let himself be abducted? Why not just knock her down and make a break for it first chance he got?

For that matter, why the hell wouldn't he just run the other way the second he saw her coming at him in the Bridgeview parking lot?

Possible answer: blackmail. Bosco might have been looking at this all wrong - he'd been looking at it as a hostage situation involving guns and threats. But what if Cruz was _blackmailing_ Noble somehow, pulling the old Two-Bags routine to get him back under her thumb again? A bit more subtle than just sticking a gun in his face.

Trouble was, Bosco couldn't think of anything she might be using as a lever. He knew that Noble had kids and that he was involved in a bitter custody battle for them, but Bosco couldn't see how Cruz could use that against him. The only thing she had on him was his meth addiction, but Noble, by his own admission, no longer cared who knew about that. Making his drug problem public would, according to him, "sell more books." And he was probably right.

Another, simpler possibility: Noble was a coward. He was supposed to be a tough man o' the world, living fast and hard, immersing himself in his work ... but from what Bosco had seen, he didn't carry much to back that up with. He generally carried a gun or two - a rifle in the trunk of his car and a pistol for personal defense - but he might not risk pulling a gun on Cruz. He might not want to risk pissing her off. She was tough and unpredictable as a rule - throw _wounded _and _desperate_ into the bargain and she'd be about as forgiving as a nest of vipers. If Mr. Writer-Boy made an aggressive move and she actually managed to fend him off, he'd be in serious trouble. Right?

Maybe. It still sounded a bit shaky.

But it was better than nothing. So let's just assume that's the way it went down: say it's a hostage situation with Cruz as the aggressor, using a gun or blackmail or whatever, and say Noble is too scared to try anything. He's in the front seat taking orders; Cruz is in the back seat giving them. A lot of those orders might not be making any sense; she is, after all, wounded and desperate. Her personal vendetta against Richard Buford is still there, burned into her mind, and that's all she thinks about. Forget about finding a place to hide, forget about all the practical problems she has facing her, forget all about _logic_; Cruz is impatient to get on with the mission. She never did have any patience for shitting around, did she? Some might say she was downright childish - when Maritza wants something, she wants it _NOW_!

_(Give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job!)_

Right, exactly. And now she's racing the clock. She'd want Noble to get on the Buford case right away.

And how would Noble (always assuming he's too frightened to disobey or disagree with her) do that? How could Noble possibly hand Buford to her now?

His contacts. _That_ was how. All of his Disciple connections.

But there was a big problem with that: all of Noble's Disciple buddies had turned on him. They'd discovered that he was working for the cops and they'd tried to kill him. That was part of what had started all of this in the first place.

_And you think that would matter to Cruz? At this point, do you really think she'd care about something like that? You think she'd be all full of motherly concern for Noble's safety?_

Nope, of course not. She wouldn't give a rat's ass about Noble's safety. She'd make him stick his neck out for her in the most lethal sense of the term. She'd make him track down one of his old contacts and throw himself on their mercy, and if he got himself killed, well ...

... well, she really didn't have that much to lose in the first place, did she?

So who would it be? Who would she send him looking for? His ol' pal Willie G. was dead, and most of Willie's cronies were in prison. So who would Noble go to?

Bosco remembered plenty of names being tossed around during the course of the Buford investigation. And at the moment he couldn't remember a single one of them. Not _one_.

Cruz, of course, had obsessively memorized all of them. She'd researched the backgrounds of every one of Noble's underworld contacts, scoured every detail relating to his involvement with the Disciples, keeping track of it all with reams and reams of handwritten notes. That seemed to be a big recurring theme throughout the whole investigation - notes. Noble had had his now-infamous notepads, but Cruz had kept her own set of books on _him_. Pages and pages of material, all lettered in Cruz's neat (but infuriatingly small, impossibly close-set) print.

Oh, to have access to those notes right now.

_Why? You don't need 'em. You don't need the names. What, are you gonna run all over New York tracking down every jagoff Noble might have hung out with at some point? It'd take a week. _

Right.

Not that it meant he was licked. Oh, hell no. He could hit the bars. The biker joints. Ask around a bit. Bosco could remember at least seven bars scattered around the boroughs that he and Cruz had scrutinized as known Disciple hangouts. Places Aaron Noble had been known to frequent in his spare time. Places with names like Peggy's Hole and The Dirty Rabbit. If Cruz did have him on a leash, if she _was_ blackmailing him somehow, she would send him to root out some of his old connections. Someone who could potentially lead them to Buford.

So there it was. There was his jumping-off point.

It'd be dangerous, though - he wasn't carrying a weapon and he didn't have the badge to protect him. If they wanted to drag him out back and administer some crowbar-assisted surgery -

_- then it would just mean your day ended up more interesting than you thought. Live dangerously. Feel the adrenaline. Go hit the biker joints._

And there was something else to think about: those boys might be just as anxious to get their hands on Noble as he was. Might be some common ground there.

So - no time like the present. Bosco looked at his watch.

It was 11:46 PM.

It was 11:46 PM and Aaron Noble was meeting with his friend Iggy Marchand at the Dirty Rabbit, while Cruz, hidden away in his car, was twisting in the grip of fever dream.

Continued in Chapter 12-ii


	22. Chapter 12, Part II

Chapter 12 Continued

II.

Even in the best of times, Bosco had never really thought of himself as Gold Shield material.

Not that it ever bothered him - he was more or less happy where he was, and when he did try to advance himself he was always careful to move towards something that would only augment what he already had, as opposed to lifting him out of it altogether. ESU, Anti-Crime ... these things weren't so much moving _up_ as they were moving _sideways_, places where he would have gained a broader understanding of the job while staying true to his roots. And if he failed (which he had, in both instances, spectacularly), so what? There was no shame in where he'd started from, and in another life - one in which there was no Cruz, no hotel room bloodbath, no IAB investigation - Bosco might simply have stuck with being beat cop to the end of his career. To him, _ambition_ did not translate to how many digits were written on your paycheck by the time you retired, or what kind of badge you had to put on your mantle to impress your grandkids with. It was whether or not you could do the same job for twenty-five years, still enjoy it, and still be damn good at it by the time you hung it up for good.

And besides, looking at some of the guys on the homicide squad - neckless butterballs with permanent nicknames like _Doughboy_ and _Jelly_ - the rank had never held much appeal for him anyway. No excitement there. No rush. No thrill of the chase.

Such was the case when Bosco spent the following four hours pursuing his wild goose chase through the biker underworld. There were no thrills. No danger. No adrenaline rush.

He _was_ recognized. Several times. Boscorelli the mouthy cop, walking right into the lion's den, alone, unarmed, and without backup, like he was just asking for trouble. But no trouble came. He wasn't threatened in any way, in part, he supposed, because word had not yet spread that he was no longer Boscorelli the mouthy cop - he was Boscorelli the broken _ex_-cop. Also, once it became clear that he was on a fact-finding mission and had no interest in stirring up trouble for the Disciples, he was treated with a kind of half-simpering, half-contemptuous respect. At Peggy's Hole, a shitty dive in Queens, he was even offered a beer, on the house.

Which he declined. Let it be said, if only for the record.

Bosco spoke with sullen bartenders. He spoke with ominous, tattooed bouncers. He spoke with surly bar patrons. He played it straight, played it cool, tossing out a few carefully measured insults (a _jagoff_ here, a _jagoff_ there) in between questions that sounded okay in his head and became surrealistic absurdities when asked aloud, I.E. "Have you seen any famous writers lately?"

Nobody had. No one knew anything about Aaron Noble or his whereabouts.

That didn't come as much of a surprise.

What _did_ come as a surprise was that nobody seemed to care. Dropping the writer's name generated absolutely no interest among gentlemen of the Disciple persuasion, something Bosco found rather curious. Just before The Shooting Noble had been in bad shape, detoxing because he was on the run from the Disciples and hence cut off from his meth supply - he'd been a dead man walking and nobody had wanted to touch him. Bosco had counted on Noble's name to grab some attention and give him that much-needed common ground; the complete indifference he was met with discouraged him.

At three-thirty Bosco left the Dirty Rabbit, a strip club in the Bronx, tired and thoroughly demoralized, believing himself to be no further ahead than when he'd started and pretty much ready to throw the whole thing over.

And like so much else in his recent life - Stevie Nunez getting caught against all odds, Noble bringing Cruz to the bar just before The Shooting and blowing Faith's covert operation out of the water, finding Cruz's photograph on the ground outside the Bridgeview - it was a case of pure coincidence, providence, serendipity, for better or for worse.

It was a case of Fate's Geometry.

* * *

Bosco had just settled behind the wheel of his car when Aaron Noble came out of the Dirty Rabbit.

The writer did not seem to be aware of him. Bosco, for his part, hadn't been aware of Noble either, even though he'd spent about twenty minutes in the bar asking around for him. And yet there he was - Noble came out and down the three shallow steps to the street without looking around, and as he did Bosco could not help feeling ridiculously vindicated, his earlier sense of pointlessness switching effortlessly to a sense of completely justifiable pride; pride in himself and his own resourcefulness, pride in his own intuitive thinking which, it seemed, was intact after all. Pride in his skill as a cop, which was all he ever was ... pride that was followed immediately by a surprisingly bitter regret that he would never again have an opportunity to use that talent for good, bitterness towards Schaeffer (and yes, towards Faith, even now) feelings that were all mixed together with that queasy _tilting_ sensation, that sense of having been nudged towards a predetermined destiny.

A predetermined destiny that, deep, deep down, he wanted no part of.

Seven Disciple's hangouts. _Seven._ And he'd found Noble on his third try.

It was pretty clear what he had to do: he had to exit his car, approach Noble, and start asking him some serious questions, point-blank.

What he did instead was send his hand into the left front pocket of his jacket. To Cruz's photograph, to that little scrap of frayed and curling paper, which had long since ceased to be something he feared and had instead become a kind of talisman, fending off the fear and uncertainty instead of calling it up fresh. There was nothing to it, really - it was just a picture of a moment shared between Maritza and Letitia Cruz long before he'd met either of them, but its presence in his pocket seemed to deny explanation, its presence was something that just couldn't be true, just _couldn't_ be, but it _was_ true, and its trueness seemed to _mean_ something.

Bosco looked at the snapshot, unaware that his breathing had slowed, that his face had slackened into an expression that was almost like reverence.

He looked at the snapshot and thought: _This was taken on a ski trip three years ago. _

He looked at Lettie, who was grinning. Grinning like everything was A-okay. Three years, Cruz had said. Three years, all it took to eat her up.

He looked at Cruz, remembered her as she was that night, warm and inviting and pressed so tightly against him, a few scant layers of clothing separating them, her breath hot and sweet in his mouth, her tongue flitting across his teeth.

Bosco looked at the snapshot and surrendered himself once and for all to the notion that he had not found it at all, that the snapshot had, in fact, found _him_, because it was a jinx, it was luck, it was good old Geometrical, Mathematical Fate, you could always trust in Fate (if not in _Faith_, HA!) to tie everything together with beautiful precision.

At last Bosco looked up from the photograph, stuffing it back into his pocket.

Noble was gone.

Gone as in _gone_. He wasn't just clear of the bar; the street ahead was absolutely Noble-free.

Bosco twisted sharply in his seat - with enough force to wrench muscles in his back - and looked behind him.

Nothing. No trace of Aaron Noble in either direction. It was almost as if ...

... well, it was almost as if he'd never been there in the first place.

Faith spoke up in his head, crystal clear and wryly reproving: _Oh, he was there. You just let him go. You were too busy sitting here getting all _X-Files_ over that fucking photograph when you should have been out there questioning him. _

_So much for that Gold Shield, eh, Bos? _

Swallowing the lump that was rising in his throat, Bosco got out of the car for a better look round.

The Dirty Rabbit was hidden (and _hidden_ was the right word; Bosco had no doubt that the location was completely on purpose) down a narrow, one-way side street that wasn't much more than an alley; there was width enough to accommodate one car, but Bosco thought four-wheeled vehicles were discouraged around these parts; the Disciples lined their bikes up along the front of the building with the obvious, unspoken assumption that the entire public street belonged to them. Bosco's car was the only one in sight.

Noble might have a car parked around the corner. Or maybe he was travelling on foot. Either way, he should still be visible, either ahead or behind. Hypnotized by Cruz's photograph or not, it still wasn't enough time for Noble to have gotten that far away.

Unless he turned and went back into the bar.

Unless he slipped between the buildings and down an alley.

Unless ...

_Unless he just went POOF! And disappeared. Right, genius?_

An unpleasant - and obvious - suspicion began to rise in Bosco's mind: it _wasn't_ Noble on the steps a moment ago. He'd seen _somebody_, of course; it just wasn't _Noble_. More likely it was just some bar patron who bore enough of a resemblance so that Bosco's eyes - and his overtaxed mind - had played a trick on him.

And speaking of bar patrons, there were three big strapping Disciple-types standing in front of the bar right now, indifferent to the rain but eyeing Bosco's Mustang (which, despite a recently acquired scratch on the driver's side, was still pretty easy on the eyes) with a mixture of suspicion and something like greed.

Bosco barely noticed them. He knew they were there, and he knew that if they weren't trouble for him now they soon would be, but he was still too busy trying to convince himself of what he'd just seen.

He'd been _inside_ the bar. That was the thing; he'd been _inside_ the Dirty Rabbit, had a good look around, and had seen no trace of Noble. The bouncers and the few patrons he'd talked to had all denied seeing him, and the bartender, a scrawny, smirking son of a bitch with needle tracks on his arms, had claimed to have never even heard of Aaron Noble.

Which didn't mean much. Bikers, right? Lowlife jagoffs. They'd lie just for the fun of it. They'd figure out what they thought he wanted to hear and say the opposite.

Still ... did he really just see Noble exit the bar? It was quite a stretch, wasn't it? Too much of a stretch, after everything else. Couldn't have been real.

Bosco's hand started to creep towards his coat pocket again. The photograph was real. The photograph was a thing that shouldn't have been, a thing that _was_ all the same.

The three guys standing outside the Rabbit were talking furtively amongst themselves now, nodding smugly, somehow ominously. Talking about him? Maybe. More likely the target of their attention was his car.

Bosco pivoted on his heel and looked around again. This was stupid - it was _Noble_, dammit, no question about it. Bosco had spent enough time with the whiny bastard to know him on sight.

_If it really _was_ Noble, he was looking pretty relaxed, wasn't he? For a _hostage_, I mean. _

Yes, and that raised another staggeringly obvious question - if Cruz really _had_ taken Noble prisoner, and _then_ sent him to sniff out some of his old biker connections, why the hell wouldn't he run the second he was out of her range? Unless she was blackmailing him with something exceedingly nasty (though Bosco still couldn't imagine what that could be), the writer had no reason whatsoever not to run away from her. What would be stopping him from hitting the first payphone he came to and calling the cops?

Or here was a funny one: what if - for reasons Bosco wouldn't even hazard a guess at - Noble was helping Cruz _voluntarily_? Bosco knew that at one point in his checkered career Noble had put in some time as a war correspondent; maybe Noble would see Cruz's crusade as just another brand of war adventure.

Bosco abandoned this idea almost immediately. It wasn't just shaky - it bordered on the moronic. Noble hated Cruz. She'd arrested him, strong-armed him into becoming a C.I., exposed his meth addiction for all to see, and used it to beat him into submission. She'd stolen his notes, ruined his work, and put him on the wrong side of a dangerous biker gang. She'd dominated him. _Humiliated_ him. And she'd had her badge behind her the whole time.

Now, from Noble's point of view, she was just a lone nut-job with a gun. And Bosco knew that if he were in the writer's shoes, he'd be itching for some payback. _Helping_ her would be the last thing on his mind.

Why, if he were Noble, he'd want to turn the tables. He'd want to make Cruz hurt a little bit. He'd want to squeeze her the way she squeezed him.

Bosco swallowed another lump in his throat as something new hit him: what if it _was_ a hostage situation, but one that had neatly and ironically reversed itself. Cruz comes to Bridgeview. Tries to take Noble by force. Shows him a gun or tries to blackmail him. But instead of rolling over like a good doggy, Noble grabs _her_. Noble disarms her. And, remembering what it felt like to have her hand squeezing his nuts, this sudden reversal of fortune goes straight to his head. He orders her into the car - _we're gonna take a nice ride in the country, Sergeant Two-Bags_ ...

No. No, surely not. Noble wouldn't risk his ass in an opportunistic reverse-kidnapping, would he? He shouldn't have to. Cruz was, to quote the papers, _ON THE RUN_. Turning her in to the proper authorities would mean big-time publicity, big-time book deals, and probably legions of brand-spanking-new fans. Needless to say, that was better than prison. Which was where he'd end up if he hurt her deliberately.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Bosco muttered helplessly.

What the fuck was going on here was probably this: nothing. Nothing was going on here. This still might have absolutely nothing to do with Cruz. So what if Noble _was_ here at the Dirty Rabbit? Why did that automatically mean that she was involved somehow? Maybe his theories were all wrong. Maybe Cruz, after dropping her photograph outside the hotel, had simply wandered away. Maybe Noble was here on unrelated personal business, trying to repair his Disciple connections and salvage his new book.

Maybe he just liked strippers.

It was probably all over by now. Cruz was probably already caught.

_You mean, Cruz is probably already _dead

The horror-factory in his head promptly illustrated this thought with an image, a kind of strange, animated crime-scene photograph cobbled together from bits and pieces of Hobart and Cruz. The level of detail in this picture was as chillingly graphic as always, so much so that Bosco - despite having seen a lot worse on the job - started to feel the first real threads of doubt about his own mental health.

This time he saw her lying face-down on Hobart's rooftop. She was wearing the black miniskirt and middy top from the day of their first meeting. She was also wearing a ragged, gaping hole in the side of her head from a high-caliber rifle bullet. There was a spreading pool of blood and an oatmeal-like splash of brain matter in a gaudy starburst pattern around her head. One of her shiny black heels had come off and was lying next to her. Her hair - the places not matted with blood and brains, that was - rippled in the wind.

Bosco pushed it out of his mind, reminding himself that such pictures were silly - almost tacky, really - painted as they were in garish comic-book technicolor.

That did not, however, dilute their power over him. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a comic book. Every instinct in him was screaming that he'd seen Noble come out of that bar a moment ago, and that his presence had something to do with Cruz.

This was the same path they would have taken. That was it. If he and Cruz were still on the job, still on the Buford case, places like this would be where Noble would be going, where he would be leading them in his capacity as their Confidential Informant. It was the same path. Bosco had simply picked it up and started following it again, and it had led him right to Noble. See - nothing spooky about it. Just good police work. A simple case of _know your quarry_. Know his habits, know his friends, know his enemies, hammer together a theory, and go from there. Bosco had simply followed an old trail, and he was certain that Cruz, whatever state she might be in, had done the very same thing. Either through force or through blackmail.

But it was all academic now, wasn't it? He'd blown it and let Noble get away from him. All because of that goddam photograph and the hold it seemed to be gaining over him.

To have come all this way, to have come _all this way _to find Noble, and then to lose him almost immediately for such a stupid fucking reason.

Bosco turned and walked back to his Mustang, fists clenched at his sides, breath coming quick and hard, not just angry at himself but actually furious and trying to restrain the urge to take it out on the car; kick the fender, kick out a headlight, take a key and run another scratch along the door, shouting some obscenity at the top of his lungs while he did it.

Instead he dropped back into the driver's seat and slammed the door as hard as he could. It helped a little, but not much.

The question that faced him was, what now? He was back to square one once again. Where did he go from here?

_The Five-Five, that's where. First you found the photograph. Then you saw Aaron Noble - or someone you _thought_ was Noble - coming out of a biker bar. That's _evidence_. So do what you should have done in the first place. Go back to the House and talk to Swersky. He'll listen. He won't want to see Cruz hurt any more than you do._ _Playtime's over, pal._

This thought came in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Glen Hobart's, and it did nothing to put him in a better mood. He still didn't want to go to the Five-Five, but it wasn't _just_ because he was afraid for Cruz; it was a selfish fear of losing control. Bosco couldn't go to the police because in his mind he still _was_ the police. And he was starting to feel entitled to the case.

Even though he'd just let a person of interest disappear right under his nose.

It took two tries before he finally landed the key in the ignition slot, and when he started the car that was when he just gave into it and let the fury carry him off; he gunned the engine roughly and broke away from the curb, tires screaming, peripherally aware that the three bikers had started to approach him, possibly intent on carrying out a carjacking (or maybe they were just a couple of gearheads who wanted to talk cars with him, sure, right, whatever), and they nearly paid for it with their lives; one of them had to hop aside to avoid being run down.

Bosco heard him slam an angry fist down on the trunk of the car as he passed.

He didn't care. He felt a little bit better now. It was in his nature - when he was pissed off, he let as many people know it as possible.

* * *

Two blocks later he was sitting at a red light trying to tell himself it didn't matter. He was still seething, still feeling oddly humiliated though he had nobody with him to be humiliated in front of, but he was also starting to feel a little bit relieved. And he was already hard at work trying to convince himself that it wasn't Noble he saw coming out of the bar at all.

Still, he wondered. He wondered about Cruz. He _worried_ about Cruz.

Brakes squealed behind him and pulled him out of his thoughts; the bray of a horn followed. Bosco, who had been honked and sworn at several times that day, glanced in the rearview mirror to see if he was on the receiving end once again.

He wasn't. A silver SUV in the southbound lane had just been cut off by a black sedan. The sedan - a Mercedes - was emerging from a parking lot, apparently trying to cross traffic over into the northbound lane.

A black sedan.

A Mercedes.

These two facts connected themselves in his mind almost immediately, and Bosco felt as if his spine had been dipped in icewater.

Aaron Noble owned a black Mercedes.

_You're nuts. You know that? You've really cracked. You're jumping at every shadow. Give it up already._

Bosco ignored this. In the rain it was impossible to make out the shape of the driver - or any passengers he might have - but the car was enough for him. Feeling lightheaded, he waited for the black sedan to put some distance between them, then pulled a graceless three-point turn right in the middle of the street (causing another volley of indignant horn blasts) and began to follow.

Without fully realizing he was doing it, Bosco began to laugh again. Because it was funny. When you thought about it, it really was funny, a comedy of errors in which no amount of fucking up could break the spell; it seemed he just couldn't fail, even if he wanted to, even if he tried his damndest to. His Fate wasn't about to let him go that easily.

It _was_ Noble in the black car. Had to be. Noble owned several vehicles - it had all been in Cruz's notes. One of them was a Silver Ghost, stored in L.A. and never driven. A '69 Vette stored in New Mexico. A gray BMW, the car he'd been driving the day Bosco and Cruz busted him.

And a black Mercedes, stored in New York.

Bosco followed it, squinting through the rain as he tried to get a sense of the driver, his right hand gripping the wheel while his left rubbed the photograph through his jacket, like the charm he was coming to really believe it was.


	23. Chapter 13: Cruz

Chapter 13

_Cruz_

The path leading up to the house was about eleven, perhaps twelve feet long, cracked and overgrown, possibly treacherous. To Maritza Cruz, a woman who would probably be comatose before the sun set and dead by the time it rose, a woman dying of cold and exposure and exhaustion and possibly the first red tendrils of a wound infection, it felt like crossing the Sahara. Albeit in the pouring rain.

Noble, waiting on the porch, watched her until she was about three quarters of the way along. He seemed to be sizing her up, perhaps waiting for her to fall, but then abruptly he swung round, ducked into the house without so much as a look back, and let the flimsy screen door swing shut in her face.

He did not appear to use a key.

Cruz either did not see this or simply did not see it as suspicious. She just kept walking, her head full of wasps and blue fire and that idiot drone, that endless -

_(gonna help me get Buford gonna help me get better get me something dope for the pain)_

- prayer/chant/whatever-it-was.

The "porch" was little more than an ancient, crooked concrete block with three shallow steps up to the door. Cruz treated each as if it was five feet high, taking them one foot at a time, the same way she'd tackled the staircase at Mercy. But when she went into the house she missed the difference in height between the concrete stoop and the floor inside; her left foot caught on the threshold and she stumbled.

What happened next seemed to happen in extreme slow-motion. She felt her balance shift. She heard a high, choked yip of alarm and realized in a disconnected sort of way that it had come from her own throat. She felt herself falling forwards and knew in that instant that it was over. And there was no fear, no anger, nothing in her but a kind of calm, cold finality.

She flashed on the fur-thief, the fucking psycho -

_(What were you, some kind of an Affirmative-Action hire?)_

- choking her to death in the alley, an iron pipe across her throat and an almost conscious decision to just give in, give in and let it all go.

She was finished. She would fall and probably shatter like glass when she hit the floor.

Then she caught her balance. Her right hand, flailing, caught hold of something - the knob of the heavy inside door - and she righted herself just in time.

Noble missed this little drama entirely; he was already halfway down the hall and he wasn't slowing.

Cruz shuffled along after him. Though her concentration was almost entirely devoted to putting one foot in front of the other without tripping over them, she caught a peripheral sense of the house Noble had brought them to. It was dark, almost too dark to see with the windows covered, and Noble didn't bother to turn on any lights (the house likely wasn't even on the grid) but she'd been in plenty of places like this and her frame of reference filled in the gaps. Things crunched underfoot; she imagined rat droppings, food wrappers, old hypodermics, fragments of crack pipes (or meth pipes, right?), the leavings of the squatters and drug addicts who'd denned here. It was too dark to get a sense of color scheme but the walls appeared to be a heavy, fecal brown, the paint dried out and flaking in places and outright peeling in others, peeling -

_(like the arm, the arm all black rotting ROTTING oh no no no please not again)_

- like her arm in the dream. The dreams had blurred together now, coalescing into an indistinct smear of images and sounds, but the run of her thoughts still retained that razor-fine edge of terror, terror that was cold and primal and awful in that it had no clear, defined shape, like a monster glimpsed through frosted glass.

Cruz took another bad step, managed another miraculous save, and kept going.

The hall stretched the length of the house and ended in what appeared to be a dilapidated kitchen; doorways on either side presumably led into the living and dining rooms. Noble had paused halfway up, at the first juncture.

He glanced back at her, nodded slightly (to her or to himself, she neither knew nor cared), then hung a left into what would turn out to be the living room.

Cruz followed. The distance couldn't have been more than fifteen feet but again it seemed longer, longer, almost impossible. She was moving slowly and watching her treacherous feet very carefully now, trying not to be distracted by the shimmer of blue fire that seemed to have invaded her field of vision. Left-foot-right-foot, one in front of the other, step step step, don't fall, don't fall. Easy. She was muttering under her breath again, mostly in time with the driving chant in her head (_Noble's gonna get me some dope_), and she was shivering badly, the rain having re-saturated her clothes. Underneath, a cold sweat clung to her skin in a slimy film. The chill, bone-deep and paralyzing, was sinking its fingers back into her flesh.

Left foot.

Right foot.

Repeat.

Easy. When constructing her outfit yesterday she had chosen running shoes for her feet. She had been unable to tie the laces so she had merely tucked them down into the sides, but now they'd worked their way out and were flopping around. That was what had nearly sent her sprawling, and why she had to be extra careful now.

But she was doing fine. She was doing fine and even now, in some obscure way, this still pleased her. If she fell she fell, but she knew she would not. She would not fall. She _could_ not fall. She had been able to stay upright when she got out of Noble's car. She had resisted the wind and the rain, she had tripped twice and kept her balance, and she was still standing. _Still standing_ - that was Maritza Cruz. That was _Sergeant_ Maritza Cruz. They had tried and tried and they'd never been able to beat her. Tried to scare her out of the Academy, hazed her, abused and taunted her, and she'd responded by outperforming them all. They'd tried to scare her off, tried to drum her out of the NYPD, tried to destroy her. And they could never do it. They couldn't win.

Buford couldn't win.

Noble would help her. Noble would get her some dope. She would heal up. Then she would get Buford, and then it would all be over, and when she turned the corner into the living room and looked up, she saw that it already was.

The man standing in the center of the room was obviously Rene "Iggy" Marchand, Noble's much-talked about Disciple contact. She knew it was Iggy because the guy did not just bear a passing resemblance to Iggy Pop - he actually appeared to _be_ Iggy Pop, and it was only when Marchand spoke that you'd know it was not the infamous punk rocker; this guy's voice was reedy and high and came through in a French-Canadian accent that sounded positively bizarre. He was wearing standard biker duds, leather all the way: heavy leather boots, jeans overtopped with leather chaps, and a worn leather jacket over a dirty white T-shirt. The T-shirt identified him as a "Pussy Inspector" in big black uppercase letters.

More significantly, he was armed with an enormous nickel-plated .44 revolver - a pure Dirty Harry piece if ever there was one - and he was aiming it right at her. The bore looked roughly the size of a railway tunnel.

Aaron Noble was already standing next to him. He did not look particularly happy to be there, nor did he look terribly triumphant, but the battle-lines were clearly drawn and Cruz understood them immediately. She understood the gun, and she understood who was _holding_ the gun. She saw the way Noble seemed to _sidle_ up to the biker, the way a kid will when trying to hide behind a tough big brother (or maybe the way a certain dark-haired, baby-faced little girl would when trying to hide behind her tough big sister) and still maintain a reasonable amount of _cool_.

She understood that Noble had betrayed her.

And yet the blind litany just went rolling on, twisting through her mind like a dying snake; everything would be fine, _she_ would be fine, Noble would help her get better and then help her get Buford. She hung onto it with a stubborn, almost childish tenacity, even as she became conscious of its futility, even as it began to recede. She hung on because there was nothing else, it was the last of what she had and there was nothing coming up to replace it, not anger or despair or even that reliable Cruz cynicism; it just disappeared into a void, a big black nothing with the shell of her pain around it, the pain and the thirst and the wasps and the chill, her tongue, face, head, shoulder, the way her legs shook, the way the rain ran down her cheeks, down her neck, down between her shoulder blades, pure physical sensory input with nothing beneath it.

Maritza Cruz stood shivering in the doorway between living room and hall, feeling no anger, no surprise, no dismay, not thinking about Lettie or Buford or how it would all work out, not thinking about Lettie or Buford _at all_. Not thinking. Just seeing, until she closed her eyes and waited for the shot, waited to be put out of her misery, because the lead pipe was across her throat again and if there was anything left in her at all it was only that cold finality.

And if there was anything behind that, it was relief.

* * *

Time passed. Twenty seconds; maybe thirty.

Cruz wondered dimly if she'd hear the shot, or if she would just feel one final hot nova of pain spread across her chest before everything went black.

When no shot came she opened her eyes.

Noble was chewing his lip. Chewing his lip and watching her carefully, as a man might watch some ancient, unsafe piece of machinery under strain. Next to him, Iggy held his gun steady on her. As bikers went, he didn't look terribly bloodthirsty, and he didn't look to be lining up a shot. He didn't really look interested in the politics of the matter at all. It was Noble who looked intense and skittish, as if he couldn't quite understand what he'd created here, and hadn't thought far enough ahead to know what to do next. They stared each other down for what seemed a very long time, but Cruz wasn't really there, she was seeing him but she _wasn't_ seeing him. Her eyes were muddy, unfocused; the blue corona still flickered and flared at the edges of her vision.

"Richard Buford's in Canada," Noble said at last. His own voice in the silence seemed to surprise him, and he made an odd sound, a laugh that seemed to turn into a cough halfway through. "I said it was complicated, but I guess it really isn't. He's in Canada and he's not coming back, Cruz. Not for a long time, anyway."

Cruz continued to stare blankly at him. She waited to feel something and nothing came. Richard Buford had gone underground in Canada. Richard Buford was not coming back. These were the dry facts and no discernable emotion came to meet them. No surprise, no dismay, nothing. She was aware only of her physical distress and she could find nothing beyond that. She searched deliberately and almost desperately for something - for anger, for rage, for that black fury she'd been on intimate terms with most of her adult life. She tried for tears - the tears that had been coming so easily to her - but couldn't bring them.

She tried consciously to pull the red curtain down over her mind and nothing happened.

She could find nothing. She could _feel_ nothing.

She thought of the house. The meth lab that was only two blocks away from where she now stood. (And did she still believe that? Yes she did.) She thought of how she'd huddled there with her sister in her arms, how she'd felt Lettie's breathing stop and knew in that instant that it was all over and none of it mattered, none of it had _ever_ mattered. She had felt nothing then, either. She had felt nothing at all.

Now time had folded back on itself. It was all over and none of it mattered, none of it had _ever_ mattered, and she could feel nothing beyond her own screaming nerve-endings.

So she just stood and watched the ebb and flow of the blue fire. Watched the way it caressed Noble, licked at him, the way it seemed to ripple with the buzz in her skull. She had no idea what kind of an expression she was wearing on her face, but it must have made Noble uncomfortable because he swallowed visibly before he continued.

"He's a nomad, our friend Buford," he said. "You knew that yourself. Never stays in one place. Doesn't _have_ to. He's got plenty of other interests, he's got fingers in pies all over North America and he's got a thousand ratholes he can duck into when the heat's on. And nobody ever knows exactly where he is."

Cruz said nothing. Water ran into her eyes and she blinked it away. Part of her had now taken to insisting that this was another dream - she was still in Noble's car and this was another dream-within-a-dream, one which she would wake from and _then_ it would finally be for real, she would be in the _real_ real world, and they could start this all over again.

That was why she was numb. Because this wasn't _real_.

But the house denied that. The _room_ denied it. The living room was small, dim, and too mundane to be anything but real; there were no high ceilings here, like in her dream; no big windows, certainly no antique furniture. There was a broken-down couch to her right, a sickly orange thing that probably dated from about the mid-seventies; two battered armchairs of similar vintage and in similar shape on the other side of the room; and a small endtable just to her left, next to the doorway. The endtable had a rather pretty vase perched on top of it, oddly out of place in a house that had obviously seen use as a crack den. The only illumination came from a gap in the boards covering the windows, casting a pallid, gray glow across the floor.

And there was Iggy. Iggy was real. He was not stage-dressing, not just some inanimate set-piece Noble had placed to add some atmosphere. He was real, and so was the gun in his hand.

It was an ambush.

The word stuck, and Cruz turned it over in her mind. _Ambush_. She had ambushed Noble last night - now Noble had done the same to her. Sent Iggy on ahead to lie in wait for them. All's fair in love and war. It raised a whole host of questions, and Cruz could entertain none of them. She couldn't hold onto a coherent train of thought for very long. She just kept coming back around to _pain, thirst, cold, wet, pain, thirst, cold, wet_.

And ever onward.

"It'll be months before he comes Stateside again," Noble was saying. "Maybe well into next year. And he'll still steer clear of New York. All of which is beside the point - even if he came back tomorrow, you're in no shape to do anything about it." He shook his head and tried to soften his expression into one of gentle pity. "It was never going to happen, Cruz. Didn't you see that?"

Cruz shook her own head slowly in return: right, left, back to center. Whether this conveyed _no, I didn't see that_ or _no, I didn't think it was going to happen_, she didn't know. She was not even fully aware that she was doing it.

Her eyes floated over to Iggy again. She seemed transfixed by him, she seemed to have to keep confirming his reality to herself. She thought he might be stoned. His expression was slack and his eyes had the unblinking, doll-like shine common only to the hopelessly wasted and congenital idiots. He seemed almost as disconnected from the present situation as she was, looking past her, looking _through_ her, his mind apparently lost in some whole other world.

But the barrel of his big Dirty Harry magnum remained pointed at her midsection, and it never wavered.

Any minute now. Any minute now the shot would come and it would end.

Cruz looked back at Noble. Hallucinatory blue fire crackled around him. What she said next was spontaneous and utterly absurd, and it _was_ like something spoken in a dream, nonsensical but somehow appropriate under the circumstances: "So what about the book deal?"

With her tongue the way it was, this came out sounding more like: _th'oh wha 'bout th' booh dee? _

Nevertheless, Noble understood her. He shrugged. "The book? You mean the one I said I'd write about you?"

Cruz nodded.

"I wasn't shitting you about that - I really _am_ gonna write a book about you. It's just that I've already _got_ it. I've had it for a while now." His eyes narrowed slightly. "You remember how we met, right?"

The question was rhetorical and Cruz didn't bother to nod. She remembered. She remembered Officer Dade nailing Noble in a narcotics sting; she and Bosco moving in to make the arrest moments later.

That seemed like a dream, one experienced a very long time ago.

But _this_ was the dream.

Wasn't it?

Cruz didn't know anymore.

"You saw my notes," Noble continued. "You know I've been checking up on you for a long time now." He squinted at her, a nervous, teasing smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Didn't you ever wonder, Cruz? Didn't you ever wonder how I could have raked up so much dirt on you in such a short time?"

Cruz said nothing.

"Took over a year," Noble said, as if she'd answered. "I'd heard a lot about you when I was writing _Blue Line Fever_, and I was sort of scratching stuff up on you. As a side-project. More curiosity than serious research. Crooked cops are a dime a dozen, but crooked _female_ cops are sort of an interesting anomaly. I talked with a few of your colleagues, looked at your records, and of course I interviewed Lettie, but that was about it. The big step was to meet you face-to-face. I have sources in the NYPD, and I thought, hey, as long as I'm in town, what better way to meet Two-Bags than to get caught by her little Gestapo squad?" He grinned. "You understand what I'm saying, Cruz? I walked into your little drug bust that day _on purpose_. I knew it was a sting. I knew Officer Edward James Dade when I saw him."

The grin widened. "And I'll tell you again what I told you then - you didn't have probable cause."

He paused, obviously waiting for a reply.

Cruz didn't offer one, though clearly she was supposed to. She was supposed to gasp. She was supposed to see it as another sweeping revelation, like the bomb he'd dropped about interviewing Lettie. Something to impress her, in other words, remind her that he'd always been one step ahead of her, that Aaron Noble was smarter and faster than she.

It meant absolutely nothing to her.

Sensing that, Noble shrugged and continued. "I'll admit I got in over my head. I do that a lot, it's my weakness. I'm impulsive. I don't think things through." He laughed grimly. "I got stabbed practically my first day back in New York, didn't I? And that wasn't the first time. I've been stabbed, shot, beaten up - once somebody actually tried to garotte me with piano wire. That was in Sardinia. Long story. Bad memories. But I do what needs doing. Hell, it's how I got hooked on ice, right?"

Again there was that expectant pause.

Again Cruz greeted it with silence.

"I figured I'd be in and out in a day," he went on. "I sure as hell never expected it all to get so out of hand. I underestimated you, Cruz, and I nearly ended up dead for it. _And_ I lost a good woman in Kim Zambrano. But it turned out to be quite a ride all the same. Quite an adrenaline rush. You were right about that much."

A pause.

Silence.

Looking a tad annoyed, Noble continued: "Buford and the Disciples were gonna be my next big project, but in light of what's happened, I think they can wait. I've made the decision, Cruz - you get your own book, and it takes priority over everything else. I've even got a working title:_ Five-Five Crime Sergeant_." He raised his eyebrows. "That was your call-sign in the field, wasn't it? I'm sort of lukewarm to it, myself. If you've got something better, I'm open to suggestions."

Predictably, Cruz said nothing.

He smiled thinly. "Didn't think so. That's the trouble, Cruz, right there - I don't _need_ you. I don't need you with me to write a book about you. A man writing about the mating habits of the Tasmanian Devil doesn't drive around with one in his fucking car."

He stopped long enough to chuckle at that, but the pause was shorter this time, probably because he'd resigned himself to not getting an answer out of her. Her silence seemed to have ruffled him, but rather than stop, he took it as a cue to fly off into a nervous babble.

"For example, that cop putting the slug in your shoulder - I can get pretty much all of Chapter One out of that. I'll tell you something, Cruz: I was in the first Gulf War, I've been to Kosovo, Somalia, Northern Ireland, some places you've probably never even heard of, and I've never seen _anything_ like what I saw in my hotel room that night. I've seen guys - tough young bucks, nineteen, twenty years old - get hit not even _half_ as bad as you did, and they'd roll around crying for their mothers. But you ... shit, I'll just say it again: you're a woman who sets _precedence_. A few inches lower and that shot could have ripped your arm right off, and yet you were ready to just take the fight right to them, blow Yokas away, and Boscorelli, and probably me as well. It was like watching Pacino in _Scarface_. I kept expecting you to point the gun at Yokas and scream _say hello to my lil' fren'_!"

Iggy snorted something like a laugh. It was the first sound Cruz had heard out of him thus far, and the first indication that he might not be as zoned-out as he looked.

"The point is," Noble continued, off into the wide blue yonder now and babbling freely. "I could find an army of ER docs and trauma surgeons who'd laugh in my face if I ever told them that story. They'd never believe anybody - especially a woman of your relatively small body mass - could suffer that kind of wound and stay upright ... and _then_ get up and walk away from the hospital under her own power ... and _then_ last as long as you have on your feet. At the very least they'd say you must have been on PCP. But you're not, are you? Not then, not now. You're stone-cold _sober_. The only thing _your_ head's full of is Buford. And Letitia."

He exhaled; apparently holding up both sides of a conversation was tiring work. "So _that's_ gonna be Chapter One - the strength of the human will and how it applies to you. I'm gonna include lots of research, case studies to back it up. The stories you hear about soldiers pulling their wounded buddies to safety even though their own guts have been blown out. That kind of thing."

The expectant look again.

Cruz merely stared back at him. She swayed on her feet, as if in a gentle breeze.

After about ten seconds Noble rolled his eyes and snorted. "Oh, come _on_, Cruz! You were always such a _chatty_ girl! Never had an opinion you could keep to yourself! I can see that big fat vein pulsing right in the middle of your forehead - that _always_ means you've got something on your mind."

He paused.

Got nothing in response.

Resumed with a shrug and a wave. "You ought to at least be proud you made it as far as you did. It was _incredible_, watching you get out of the car and walk up that path a minute ago. I said I wanted to see how far you'd go, and I did."

Silence.

After a moment his shoulders sagged. "The Sarge really doesn't have anything left to say?"

Cruz lowered her head. The Sarge really didn't have anything left to say. She felt her lips turn up in their own strange, thin little smile, one that was entirely without humor, without any conscious emotion behind it at all. Her thoughts were sluggish and confused and steeped in pain.

But she was starting to understand. She had the word _ambush_. She had Iggy. It was twenty-eight hours since she'd left Mercy - roughly twenty of which had been spent in Noble's company - and she had _that_ as well. These things were bright way points in the fog, and she homed in on them, she -

_(focused)_

- regained enough of herself to understand why this was happening. She understood that it was _Noble_. It was so very _Noble_ to do it like this, to bring it to this kind of a head. Noble had decided to wash his hands of her. Maybe right from the start. Or maybe it was a snap-decision made over a beer with Iggy. Didn't matter either way. The Great Writer had decided to cancel the Adventure, but he hadn't called the police, as any sensible person would; he hadn't attempted a dump-and-run at a precinct house or a hospital; he hadn't even tried to dispose of her himself; God knew it would have been nothing to roll her out into the rain while she was passed out. He hadn't tried to stab her or knock her on the head. Instead he'd drawn her into a ridiculous trap - an _ambush_ - and ducked behind the armed biker he'd brought for protection ... never mind that the man was obviously high and probably a lot more dangerous than she was.

And why would he bring an unstable third party into the picture and put himself in this sticky position when there were far easier - and far safer - ways to get rid of her?

Why, because _he was impulsive_! Because _he didn't think things through_! Because he was the Famed and Acclaimed Aaron Noble, a man who liked to jerk off to his own sense of superiority and could do it pretty much anywhere, a man whose bread and butter was finding the sweeping melodrama in the dull meaninglessness of real-world tragedy. A man who wrote from the trenches and from the ghettos, getting stabbed if necessary, getting addicted to crystal meth if necessary, getting mixed up with bikers and crazed ex-Anti-Crime Sergeants if necessary. A man whose keen sense of theater outweighed any sense of his own self-interest.

He'd brought her here because this was _his_ way, this was his way of _making it right_. He was a hack, and this was a hack's ending. All that talk. All that posturing. He wanted to wash his hands of her, but he wanted to do it from a leisurely distance. Sure - let somebody else do the dirty work of holding her at bay while he indulged himself, ran his mouth, outlined his plans and motivations like a villain in a James Bond movie. While he gloated. While he studied her reactions and took notes. While he shot his wad into her face one last time, you might say. _She_ was the Great Writer's Adventure, after all. His study in obsession and a handy chance to get a little payback for all she'd put him through.

To Aaron Noble she'd never been anything else.

And suddenly she could see herself, she could step outside of her own skin and see herself, and what she saw was nothing more than what she was: a bedraggled and badly injured woman standing in a shitty little room in a shitty little house in her untied running shoes and her dripping clothes. That was all. She could see herself and she could _smell_ herself, a cloying aroma of piss and sour puke and blood and sweat (and something ominous underneath, something rank and spoiled, and she didn't know if it was real or imagined but she knew exactly where it was coming from), she could see herself falling apart, and she could see that she'd let Noble do this to her, she'd let this fucking bastard manipulate her and tease her and torture her and now she'd handed him his perfect ending on a silver platter. She was standing here giving him his captive audience, _feeding_ him, and she didn't care, she _couldn't_ care, because she had been pounded flat under the hammer of the pain, she had been consumed by that one overriding question: _How Much Longer_. How Much Longer would she have to endure this, How Much Longer before Noble could get in touch with his "safe people" to get her something to stop the pain dead in its tracks, How Much Longer before she could get some relief?

How Much Longer, God help her, before she could get some kind of _fix_.

A pill under the tongue. Or down the hatch with a glass of water. Or the sting of the needle, the plunger depressing, forcing some alien fluid into her veins. Drown the nerve-endings in something sweet, quiet them, shut off the signal from that screaming pain-center in the jelly of her brain. Quiet the blind litany, no more _Noble's gonna get me some dope_. Quiet the voices in her head, her father, no more Papa telling her gently to stop, her own answering cry of -

_(this is ATONEMENT, this is PENANCE)_

- but those were just words, words with no meaning, no meaning until now, right here and now, _this_ was atonement, _this _was penance. Cruz had seen it in the hospital, in her bedroom mirror, in the rearview mirror of Noble's car, and here, now, it was finally true, that shewas Lettie, she had become her sister, she stank and she hurt and she wanted a fix to make the pain go away and by the end that was pretty much all Lettie was, she was Lettie because -

_(things come around)_

- things _always_ come around, she'd kept stumbling across Lettie everywhere she went, turning grimly away from her each and every time, looking down her nose at her, berating her, scolding her, screaming at her, sneering at her, asking _how can you keep doing that to yourself, how can you hurt yourself like that_, cheap questions, so easy to ask, so easy to just let her go and pretend she didn't exist and now here she was herself, pale and misshapen and shivering in the reek of her own piss, and a few minutes ago she was huddled in Noble's car, the same way Lettie -

_(I'm sorry, 'Ritza)_

- had huddled in the back of the RMP that day. This was the same woman who had believed herself so strong, so capable, so resourceful, the woman who had come through so much, and all the time thinking she was so _lucky_, that Fate smiled on Maritza Cruz, that things just sort of fell together and it would end just like a movie, she'd catch Buford, corner him, kill him, shoot him right the fuck off his Harley if necessary.

None of that was real. None of that had _ever_ been real. The woman in the mirror was real, and the woman in the mirror was Lettie. It was as simple as that. She'd had it all wrong, right from the start. She'd thought it was over when she stepped through the door of this room when it had actually ended three months ago, in that place only two blocks away from where she now stood.

It had all ended in that single breath. A single breath she had felt -

_(felt her go I felt her go she died a little while ago)_

- against her cheek, and all bets were off from that day forward.

Now there was only Noble. Noble was all that was left.

She was dimly aware that her right hand had started up again, opening and closing, opening and closing, _clenching_, the way it had in the hospital, ragged nails trying to punch new holes in her palm.

She felt like she had to vomit again but had nothing left in her stomach to do it with.

She closed her eyes and felt tears overspill and slide down her cheeks. She felt a drop of water run down her spine, felt an itch form at the small of her back, and she -

- she was slipping again. She was slipping and something was -

_(!dreaming dreaming!)_

- howling in the center of her mind, the center of the buzz, the center of the pain -

_(!all a dream so now wake up WAKE UP if you think you can do it!)_

- and there was high, malicious, screaming laughter in it, wake up, wake up, that's right, it's all a dream, you pathetic bitch, you stupid twat, you fucking _insect_, all a nightmare, you're Lettie, right, sure you are, your sister has possessed you, _Noble's gonna get you some dope_, he's laughing at you, laughing at you, laughing -

_(laughing Lettie laughing cramming handfuls of snow down -_

- her back -

- _and_ -

- she looked at herself again and she was disgusted all over again, not only because she looked like Lettie but because she looked ridiculous, she -

_(you look -_

- _ridiculous_. Rocking back and forth on her feet, barely able to stand, with a gun slung low at her side like she could have done something, like she could have done _anything_. Like she could have done anything when -

- Bosco stumbled around calling _10-13_ with the smoke thickening -

- and Lettie standing on the steps yelling -

_- Papa bought me fish!)_

- and she could barely think, she couldn't find where thought ended and reality began and it was outside and inside and her head reeled, her head was full of bugs. _Bugs_. It pounded with them. She felt a heavy dry-sob trying to work its way up and she swallowed it, swallowed hard, but she wasn't completely successful and her chest hitched visibly.

She made a kind of cracked hiccupping sound low in her throat.

"For what it's worth," Noble said, unaware of the storm going on only a few feet away from him, "I'm honestly sorry about what happened to your kid sister. But she made her own bed, Cruz. In the end we all do."

There was an unmistakable finality in that last word. You could almost hear the periods at the ends of Noble's sentences, and that was undoubtedly the big one, the big _THE END_.

Cruz caught it and looked up at him. She managed to -

_(focus)_

- get a slight grip on herself, get some of her objective reality back, and she wasn't numb anymore, she was anything but numb, she had again become the center of a cold, perfect clarity, sounds and smells and sensations all magnified. The blue fire was still there, still fizzing and hissing around everything, like a halo. Her eyelids fluttered against it. She wondered crazily if Noble had a tape recorder running in his pocket to preserve all his lovely talk, thought of asking him, decided not to. She wondered what he would do now. If he would really order (or ask) Iggy to finish it, to shoot her down like a dog. He was too much of a coward to do it himself.

The thought struck the wasps' nest in her head and sent them into a frenzy, sent _her_ into a frenzy of hysterical anger tinged with that dark terror. Was that really what he was going to do? Order her _execution_? Bring his hand down in a sharp chopping motion, like a mafia thug in some mob-opera, and order his biker friend to put a bullet in her? _Do da job, Iggy - plug da dumb broad_.

Fine, then - let's just see if the dickless _cabron _had it in him. She'd like to hear that, she'd like to hear Noble give the order. She'd like to hear _how_ he'd give it. If he wanted to put an end to her, then let's just see him fucking do it. She doubted he had the balls.

But let's just see.

Cruz grinned suddenly. It was the cannibal-grin: wide, vicious, meant to provoke. She lifted her right arm slightly and held it out from her side, palm-out. It was shaking badly but she didn't care. She arched her back defiantly, presenting Iggy with a better target, wondering again if she'd hear the shot first or if it would just be brief heat and then nothing.

"So what happens now?" she asked hoarsely.

What came out sounded more like: _th'oh wha' hopp'n's noh?_

Noble's gaze flitted uncertainly over to Iggy, then back to her. "Well ... basically, the deal is this: you reach very slowly into your pocket and produce the meth you're carrying. _All_ of it."

Cruz blinked. The meth. She'd forgotten all about the meth and the reason she'd brought it. She'd forgotten almost everything.

Again, though, the word lit up her mind like a firework, cut a swath through the fog, like _ambush_ and _atonement_ and _penance_. It was a word that seemed to have a little magic in it, a kind of incantation; it was the instrument of her sister's death and it represented all of her hatred for Aaron Noble, which it obligingly brought back for her.

She picked it up gamely and put back on again, like an old and much-loved article of clothing.

She _focused_ on it.

The red curtain was falling over her. She could feel it. There was a halo of blue fire around everything she looked at but it was the red curtain she was seeing, and its familiarity comforted her. It calmed her, even as it built in her. Peace from rage, a contradiction in terms. Nothing she had ever done had ever mattered, and now there was only Noble in front of her. And he was as good a target as any. Because he'd won, and he knew he'd won. Guys like -

_(Gaines and Alvarez Schaeffer and his handcuffs Robbie Holland and his video camera Buford Barnes)_

- him _always_ won, didn't they? He knew it and she knew it. The Nobles and the Schaeffers and the Bufords and the Hollands were all the same, they were of that very special species, the Great White American Male. They knew the system. They _were_ the system. They could shrug off a murder charge like a parking ticket. They could videotape themselves and their buddies beating and taunting and raping a helpless, skinny, sick little girl and call it freedom of expression. People like them always beat people like her, because people like her were helpless against them, and here, now, was the proof.

But she was not completely helpless. She was still in possession of two working firearms, and yes, she might be pathetic, but she was not completely helpless.

And the fucking bastard was standing right in front of her.

And what else was there left to do now but make sure Aaron Noble never walked out of this room alive? Noble _was_ Buford, after all. He was from the same place, he was on the same level.

"You take it out very slowly," he was saying, "and you drop it on the floor in front of you. Then you back up three steps."

_Back up three steps_. It was as if he'd been peeking at her thoughts.

And it showed that the stupid _cabron_ was still afraid of her. A ripple of fresh contempt went through the red curtain. He knew she was still armed and he was actually _afraid_ of her. He'd had fifty opportunities to disarm her, he could have plucked both the Tec-9 and his own Colt .45 out of her jacket at his leisure, and yet he'd left the guns on her.

For the book, right? For the _story_. Yes. With Noble _everything_ was for the story. He could do what he liked and make up whatever he wanted later, but he'd never take _that_ route, oh no. He'd never compromise his _integrity_ like that. He had to _live_ the story. Become part of it. Better to leave her strapped - more exciting that way.

He was impulsive, after all. He didn't think things through.

At some point within the next thirty seconds, he was going to die for it.

"Then?" she asked.

Noble pursed his lips and shrugged, as if the answer was self-evident and he was surprised she couldn't see it. "Then we all just walk away. I don't want to see you hurt more than you already are. That was never my intention."

Cruz felt a crazed kind of disappointment. Disappointment that she'd never get to see what he looked like handing down the lethal order. She thought it might have looked funny.

Noble seemed to misread her expression as cautious optimism - as if she couldn't believe how _kind_ he was being by letting her live, how wonderfully he'd lived up to his own gallant surname.

"That's right," he said. "Nobody has to get hurt." He laughed. "You're scum, Cruz. And you righteously fucked over my life. But I bear some of the blame for that, and I think you've already suffered enough for your sins. I also think you're going to die if you don't get some serious medical attention very soon - and believe it or not, I don't want that for you. We're both in a hell of a jam here. I'm in hot water and sinking deeper by slow degrees, and you're killing yourself by slow degrees, and so it's time for us both to bow out. But I _do_ want that meth. I think I'm entitled to it."

Another pause. He was _still_ probing for a reaction, maybe an argument - maybe even a classic Two-Bags Cruz tirade about what a pathetic dope fiend he was.

None came. She had humbled again. Put her head down and trained her eyes on the floor. Nothing dangerous here, Mr. Noble. Nothing dangerous at all. The Sarge was dead, after all. The Sarge had been bludgeoned to death by that big hot hammer of pain.

"You give me your meth," Noble said, "and then we part ways. Iggy gets on his bike. I get back in my car. You can lie down on the couch there. When I get a few blocks away, I'll call 9-1-1 and have them send an ambulance for you."

In a better frame of mind Cruz might have laughed out loud. It was exactly the kind of plan she would have expected Aaron Noble to come up with. Leading her here was his _ending_ - walking away with all the loose ends tied up so neat and tidy would be his _epilogue_.

Except she didn't think _Senor_ Pussy Inspector had any intention of letting _anybody_ just walk away. Iggy held the big .44 revolver steady on her, the muzzle trained on her belly, but his eyes were still glassy and looking off over her shoulder. He was here and yet he wasn't - he was following some whole other script in his head, waiting for some little internal cue. He might let Noble blather on for a little while, play his little _you-go-your-way-I'll-go-mine_ game, but eventually he might tire of it. A few minutes later she and Noble would be dead and Rene "Iggy" Marchand would be in the wind.

She didn't care about herself anymore, but Noble was _hers_. She would kill Iggy if he tried to take Noble away from her.

This did not sound the least bit crazy to her. It only sounded right.

"Now," he said. "Are you gonna be good?"

Cruz nodded.

"You know this is right, don't you? You know it's over. It was over before it even started."

Cruz smiled grimly. She nodded again, truthfully this time, the curtain thickening, settling over her. She could feel it now, working with the pain, working _in_ the pain, she could feel it in the blood pounding in her ears and behind her face, in the rotten throb that had woven itself throughout her entire body.

She could feel it wanting to take her.

Just a little longer, though. Just a little bit longer.

"I actually think you're gonna be okay," Noble said, trying absurdly to sound casual. "There's this place that opened up about two years ago, downstate, in a little town called Eastbridge. Cedargrove, it's called. All one word: _Cedargrove_, no spaces or hyphens. It's a correctional facility for women. Minimum security. Low-risk and nonviolent offenders only. Now, you're not exactly _nonviolent_, but I think they'll peg you as low-risk. After all, it's not like they're gonna send you to Riker's Island - might as well run you through a meat grinder and be done with it, right? You're a disabled ex-cop. So what if you fudged a few reports, planted some drugs, executed a gangbanger or two? You're still not a drooling mass-murderer. They'll set you up with a room at Cedargrove, trust me. And that's what they call the cells, too - _rooms_. Prison language is a no-no there. They give everybody jobs: groundskeeper, cook, librarian. The inmates take care of the upkeep. They stress education and rehabilitation. And they have a tennis court. A fucking _tennis court_. Not that it'll be much good to you. I'm no doctor, but you probably _are_ gonna lose that arm."

Cruz wasn't listening anymore. Her head spun. Images flashed past, Lettie chief among them, and she could feel herself slipping again but she held herself together. She stopped looking at the floor and she held her -

_(focus)_

- head up, high and proud again, meeting his eye. She took quick stock of herself. Her right hand was shaking. Her reflexes were untrustworthy, probably useless. The lighting was bad and her eyes were still full of blue fire.

A quick look at Iggy.

The biker's hand was steady, his silver .44 still aimed directly at her. She should try to take him first. She knew that, and she also knew that she wouldn't. It would be Noble. She would take Noble first, and Iggy would kill her, and that would be the end.

But Aaron Noble would be dead. She would at least take that much with her.

If anybody was still keeping score.

Cruz began to reach very slowly into the left side of her coat. The left side of her coat, where Noble's pistol was concealed. She felt a crawl of revulsion as her fingers brushed the numb, alien flesh of her left hand.

Images: she saw Yokas. She saw Yokas turning the gun around, left hand to right. Saw the muzzle flash. Saw the room tilt crazily as the impact knocked her back and drove the wind from her. She remembered everything. Every detail.

She saw Boscorelli. Saw him standing in her apartment. Saw him move in close, closer, closer as she went forward and grabbed him, felt him against her, his breath against her, losing herself in him, some small, almost-extinguished part of her crying out at his touch, wanting it to be real, for him to be real, for someone to love and to love her. She remembered everything. Every detail.

She saw the psycho in the alley. Saw him grinning as he pressed the bar against her throat. What were you, some kind of an Affirmative-Action hire? She saw the world turning black and felt that same exhausted relief, that same cold finality. She remembered everything. Every detail.

And she saw Lettie. Lettie on the ski slope, seventeen, laughing and throwing snow at her. Lettie on the street, eighteen, selling her body in her pink jailbait outfit. Lettie on the steps, five years old, yelling about her goldfish. Lettie at Mercy, twenty-one, face smeared with charcoal, smelling of shit.

Lettie, twenty-one, in her arms, dying, the house burning down around them.

Every detail.

She could hear her own pulse rushing in her ears. The itch on the small of her back. She still had a thumb lodged under one corner of the red curtain. Holding it at bay, keeping it from touching down, just a little longer now, please just a little longer ...

"That's right," Noble whispered, watching her. His voice was hoarse. There was something grotesquely sexual in it; he should have licked his lips. "Take it out slow. Very slow. I know you're gonna be good, but just be careful, that's all - my friend here's a bit touchy. Right, Ig?"

"Just Smith and Wesson and me," Iggy responded blandly. It was the only time he spoke. A wide, yellow grin had spread across his face, but his eyes were still vacant, and the accent - thick, French, barely intelligible - was almost comical: _Jus' Smit' an' Weh-son an' me_. Cruz (which was to say, the _old_ Cruz, _Sergeant _Cruz) knew that Quebec had a heavy biker presence, but she still could not connect that haughty French-waiteraccent with a man who looked like any one of a thousand Hell's Angels.

It made everything seem that much more skewed, that much more unreal.

For the second time it occurred to her that she might already be dead. Yokas had killed her and this was hell, and when Iggy shot her maybe it would just start all over again.

She pushed the thought away.

"I really don't want you to get hurt," Noble said. "I've done you a favor, Cruz, really I have. You don't have to die, and this doesn't have to be the end. I think I'm even gonna miss you a little. I'm actually hoping I can come and visit you at Cedargrove."

He smiled then, and it was his best smile, his broad, winning, book-jacket-photo-smile. "Maybe we can even work out an interview schedule."

"Maybe we can," she slurred, hardly aware that she'd spoken at all.

Tears began to flow again as she felt her hand brush the butt of Noble's .45 and bypass it, her fingers sliding under the gun to another, smaller pocket, closing around something that still resided there.

The meth. Noble's crystal meth.

Because that was what he wanted. That was what he wanted, so that was what she was going to give him.

Cruz scooped it out of her pocket - all of it, just as he'd asked - and she realized that she could hear that sound again, that high, keening, teakettle sound coming from deep in her own chest, and as she drew back her arm and threw the crystal meth at Noble with almost all of her remaining strength the scream exploded out of her, she screamed at the top of her lungs and let the red curtain fall over her for the last time in her life, she screamed as her right hand, empty again, dropped to her side, ducked under her coat, and closed on the Tec-9.

* * *

Continued in Chapter 13-ii 


	24. Chapter 13, Part II

Chapter 13 Continued

II.

As it had been in Noble's Melrose hotel room less than a week before, as real world gun battles often are, the shooting was quick and dirty and unremarkable, a confused snarl of action and reaction in which the best laid plans quickly degenerated into fevered second-by-second desperation:

First, Noble flinched away from her, in part because she'd thrown something at his face (the little plastic envelopes of crystal meth, too light to act as effective projectiles, didn't even reach their target and instead went fluttering off in various directions), mostly because of the sheer, unexpected force of her scream, and it was at almost the same instant -

- that Iggy flinched as well. For one razor-thin second his gaze flickered over to Noble, and that -

- was the second in which Cruz slapped her coat back with the heel of her right hand, exactly as she'd planned from the start: like a gunslinger in a spaghetti western. She caught the grip of the machine-pistol, thumbed the safety, slipped her finger around the trigger, and -

- though Noble was supposed to be first, there was just enough cop left in her to overrule that order and send her aim searching for the armed subject instead: Cruz pivoted the barrel of the gun towards Iggy. She didn't even attempt to bring it up to aim with the sights because she didn't have the strength -

(It was at this point that Noble, sensing what was about to happen and determined to react better to this shootout than he had to the first, drop-rolled across the floor, heading for the relative safety of one of the ratty armchairs on the other side of the room).

- and so she fired the gun straight from the hip instead. The Tec-9 was an older model designed for the civilian market, semi-automatic, left unmodified by its original owners. Trying to use such a gun on full-auto would have been ludicrous anyway; again, she retained enough of her training to fire the weapon properly, squeezing off three quick, professional shots at Iggy Marchand -

- all three of which missed, even though Iggy was less than fifteen feet away from her, and he -

- was a lot quicker than she might have expected, bringing his heavy Dirty Harry revolver up and firing off a shot with a speed that was surprising -

- however -

- though the report of the magnum was impressive (and deafening in the little room) the shot was no steadier than her own and was borne mostly of reflex: the bullet hit the vase on the little table next to the doorway. The vase detonated like a porcelain grenade, sending pieces of itself flying in all directions -

- one shard roughly the size of a compact disc slicing through the air with the lethal grace of a Japanese throwing star. It hit Cruz in the side of the head, tearing off most of her left ear and saving her life; she was sent staggering sideways just as Iggy, again frighteningly quick, lined up a better shot and sent a second bullet at her -

- which passed through the space she'd occupied a half-second before, much as Bosco's reflexively fired shot had in Noble's hotel room, and blew a fist-sized hole in the wall behind her as she -

- stumbled to the right, her head singing with bright, fresh pain. Her thigh struck the arm of the hideous orange couch and she sort of fetched up against it; it was the couch and the couch alone that kept her from losing her balance and falling -

- and it was then that Iggy hesitated. Possibly because whatever narcotic he had working in his system had dulled his reflexes, possibly because it was hard to line up a good shot in the dimness of the room, possibly because blood was streaming down Cruz's face and neck from her mutilated ear and he thought he'd already hit her. Whatever the reason, it was his last mistake because -

- Cruz squeezed off six more rounds from the Tec-9, not even attempting to aim, sweeping the barrel of the gun across the room in a short arc -

- the first, second and sixth shots missing their target -

- the third, fourth and fifth drilling into Iggy's gut, throwing -

- the biker back against the wall. He folded over with a very French-sounding _whoo-oof_, then fell heavily to his knees. His magnum went off reflexively and put a third round into the floor, then fell out of his hand as he clutched at his punctured belly. He looked up at her, eyes wide, and for the first time there seemed to be an element of real awareness there. No contempt, no promise of vengeance in the next life - just dull, stupid surprise. Cruz had once watched a rookie patrolman die with that same look on his face. Iggy stared at her, then -

- seemed to remember his gun. He took one hand away from his stomach and made a half-hearted reach for it, blood pouring out of him and pattering on the floor, and that was when -

- Cruz fired again, using the same wild, random, sweeping technique, the Tec-9 spitting out another even half-dozen shots -

- only one of which actually hit Iggy. It went low, but the biker was on his knees now and the shot was lethal. The bullet hit him in his _Pussy Inspector_ T-shirt, obliterated the second _S_ in _Pussy_ and plowed on through his heart, killing him instantly -

- and this time when Iggy struck the wall behind him he slid down, settling into an improbable and morbidly ridiculous pose, his legs splayed out on either side with his torso hanging limply over them, arms spread.

He looked like a broken doll.

Blood ran out of his mouth and into his lap in a thin stream.

Noble was still on the floor on the other side of the room, hands over his head, waiting for it to be over.

It was over. In less than fifteen seconds, it was all over.

* * *

And Maritza Cruz was still standing.

* * *

Still standing.

Still standing.

The red curtain began to lift.

In the past this always came smoothly, gradually. When she came back there was always a sense of vertigo, a pleasant, warm tremble in the limbs, even a giddy sense of excitement, but she always came back fully aware of her actions, and very rarely regretted any of them.

Now there was nothing but raw sensory perception.

She caught the smells first. Predominately cordite. Cordite, like the hotel room, and for a quarter of a second she was there again, in her mind she was back in the hotel room -

_(!give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job!)_

- but then she -

_(focus)_

- caught her mind and she was here again, in the here-and-now. Smelling cordite. Gunsmoke.

And underneath ... blood. Sweat. Piss.

From herself?

From Iggy?

Made no difference. Iggy was dead.

And she was still standing.

Where was the other one? There was another one. Noble. Where was Noble?

Cruz turned slowly to her left. If Noble was here, then he was somewhere to her left; there was nothing to her right but a wall and the orange couch that had saved her from falling.

There was pain; bright, hot, needling through the side of her head. New pain.

Tears again; rolling down her cheeks, sliding easily through little canals already forged through the sweat and rain on her face.

She blinked.

She _focused_.

Aaron Noble was on the other side of the room. He was just getting to his feet. Once there, he stood in ghostly sillouette right in front of the gap in the boarded-up window, the room's only light-source. She could not see his face, but his posture was that of a clearly frightened man, his head tilted back on his neck, hands raised defensively at chest-height, palms out, a gesture of wary supplication.

Cruz took a shaky step towards him. The Tec-9 was still clasped in her hand, the barrel still hot, fifteen rounds left in the magazine from the original thirty.

The gun had not exploded.

She'd been afraid of that at one point, hadn't she? Afraid of the old, disused, unmaintained gun just blowing up like a grenade, perhaps vaporizing her remaining arm below the elbow. But the Tec-9 had come through for her, it hadn't exploded ... but it hadn't killed Richard Buford, either, which had always been its purpose, its reason for being, the reason she had stolen it from a kid-gangbanger whose name she could no longer even remember. It had missed its purpose and instead killed a man named Rene Marchand, a man everybody called Iggy because he looked like Iggy Pop, a man who'd fancied himself a Pussy Inspector and wore the shirt to prove it.

The blue fire was everywhere now. It seemed to be melting inward, gradually closing off the window of her vision.

She took another step.

"Christ Almighty," Noble breathed. His expression was familiar, the same one he'd worn when she snuck up behind him the previous night. Disbelief. Fear. Something like awe. And a trace of what might even have been laughter.

Another step. Another and another. Her shoelaces were still loose, still dangerously close to tripping her up, but they didn't, and her legs were shaking, but they held her.

She was still standing.

She couldn't fall.

She could never fall.

There was very little left of her mind now. The buzz of the wasps was deafening, it didn't sound like a thousand anymore, or a hundred-thousand, or a million, it sounded like a _billion_ of them in her head now, burrowing, eating, stinging, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. She could feel something wet and slimy brushing against the shelf of her jaw; she suspected it was whatever remained of her left ear.

She was closing the distance on Noble, who still wasn't making any sudden moves.

At six feet she stopped and brought the gun up to cover him.

Noble spoke again. This time he said: "Don't you ever fucking _die_?"

He spat the words at her, trying to sound defiant, but it was a stupid thing to say and he seemed to know it. It was campy. Theatrical. Hollow, considering the circumstances. And so perfectly _Noble. _

Cruz didn't reply. She had her gun aimed at what she believed, somewhere in her fog, to be the approximate area of his chest.

Possibly sensing how far gone she was, Noble made as if to step forward, perhaps with the intention of lunging past her for the door.

Cruz made a tiny motion with the gun and croaked one word: "Stay."

It came out: _'tay._

Noble stayed. He raised his hands a little higher and waved them a bit, _whoa, whoa, easy now_. With distant surprise Cruz saw that he really was laughing. At first it seemed like he might actually have been crying, but she caught a sense of his facial expression and there was no doubt about it - Noble was laughing, as if he was watching all of this happen to somebody else and it was the funniest damned show in the world.

"Okay, I get it, I get it - you are one seriously hard _chica_!" he cried. His voice was high, squeaky, hysterically cheerful. "A tough nut! A walking tank! The NYPD brass don't know what they fucking threw away with you, do they?" He spread his arms. "The Unstoppable Force, Two-Bags Cruz!"

Cruz stared at him.

Noble stared back. There was a definite sense of reflection, of positions having been reversed almost perfectly from what they'd been only a moment ago. Cruz retained enough of herself to appreciate this. She appreciated it and she savored it. She savored the look on his face, what she could see of it.

"Oh, you silly _bitch_!" he blurted suddenly. "What did you really think was gonna happen? Huh? You really think I was gonna go on the run and shack up with you, play Bonnie and fucking Clyde with you for the next God-knew how many months? Change your fucking diapers and shoot you up with morphine and pour cough medicine down your fucking gullet?"

Cruz heard almost none of this.

Something else had caught her eye.

She glanced down and motioned with the barrel of the gun. "Kneel."

"Fuck yourself."

He wasn't laughing anymore. Clearly terrified now, he had just reached the stage where he wasn't quite sure if he should risk charging her or not. She could see it. She'd seen it on the job.

The tears would come next. The tears and the begging. Cruz knew this because, again, she had seen it before. She had watched Alvarez beg, cry, call for his mother. It would be just like that, just like Michael Alvarez, one of two men she had murdered.

"Cedargrove," Noble said shakily. "I'll put in a good word for you. Iggy ... Iggy shot first. I saw it. Self-defense. He attacked both of us. Right? They'll send you to Cedargrove."

Cruz motioned for him to kneel again but said nothing.

"Fine then, go for it, Two-Bags," he spat, spreading his arms bravely, exactly as she had less than five minutes ago. "Come on. Go for it. Shoot."

"Kneel and I won't."

_'Nee 'n I 'on't._

Noble's head inclined slightly. He wanted to live. Of course he did - the bluster was just bluster, the bluster was shit. He wanted to live, and he'd take any chance he could, believe any promise she made.

Again, there was enough Cruz left to appreciate this.

He knelt, carefully, keeping his hands raised in warding-off position. The gesture was vaguely superstitious.

Cruz made another slight motion with the Tec-9. "Meth," she said simply.

Noble suddenly understood. He looked down.

The little ziplocked envelopes of the drug were scattered everywhere. A couple were right in front of him, illuminated by the sheet of pale light from the window.

"Pick it up," she whispered.

_'Ick it uh._

Noble only stared at her, his throat working. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Pick it up, Noble."

"Why?" he said softly. A twinge of hope in his voice now. It was clear what he was thinking: do what she wants, and she just _might_ let him go. Cruz's expression revealed nothing. She just stood there and looked down at him. Down through her blue fire.

Presently her nose began to bleed; it burst forth in a sudden gush, the way it had in his car, pouring down over her lips and chin.

It didn't bother her. She used it instead, spitting through it, showering the top of Noble's head with a little rainfall of bloody saliva.

"Why?" he repeated, but she could see the way his eyes were moving now, darting hungrily between her and the stuff on the floor. Even now he wanted it. Even with a gun to his head he wanted it.

Dimly she saw Lettie running across the street, running away from the Anti-Crime squad car, running for the house and her fix.

"You're going out, Noble," she rasped. "Might as well go out high."

Ten words. In her current state it was nothing short of a speech, but she got it out and Noble understood it.

He understood it, and he understood what it meant for him, and that was when he charged her.

He screamed as he did it, consciously or unconsciously trying to use her own tactic against her, but she'd sensed it coming, she'd sensed it because a little glimmer of the Anti-Crime Sergeant still existed in her. The Anti-Crime Sergeant had seen it all before. She'd watched cornered, desperate suspects weigh their options and make that last vain attempt at an attack before being shot down. She'd watched that very thing happen during the bust Noble had helped them make on Willie G., roughly two thousand years ago, in another life altogether.

The attack was borne of desperation and was poorly executed. Noble came in almost flailing, as if trying to start a schoolyard slap-fight, but he hit her full-on and the momentum sent both of them stumbling back across the room. Debris crunched underfoot, including pieces of the vase that Iggy's bullet had shattered. They staggered across the room in a kind of shuffling, grunting embrace, looking like two drunken invalids trying to dance.

Noble groped at her. Clawed at her. He was trying to hit the tender spots, raking at her mutilated ear, grabbing at her shoulder. Cruz felt her balance going, felt herself being pushed down by the man's superior weight and strength. All the thought she'd wasted on which way a physical confrontation would swing, and now here they were at last, and she was going over backwards, he was bearing down on her.

He caught hold of the side of her head and, almost growling, he yanked on something and she felt the tearing -

_(the arm the arm he ripped my arm off)_

- felt the pain slice through her head again as he pulled off an already-mangled scrap of her ear.

Her right foot went out behind her and braced her. She spat blood in his face. Noble grunted in surprise or disgust or both. He was groping for her shoulder now.

Cruz's hand was still on the Tec-9. The Tec-9, which had been mashed between them.

She pulled the trigger, not knowing or caring if the bullet would hit him or her, knowing a half-second later that it had hit him, because he screamed and suddenly his hands were gone, his weight against her was gone.

Noble took two loping steps backwards and dropped back to his knees again, clutching at his leg, blood pouring through his fingers; the bullet had torn a long, ragged channel through the meat of his right thigh.

Cruz took a step towards him. Noble was on his knees. Time folded back on itself again. Doubled. Tripled. She saw Noble -

_(Alvarez/Gaines)_

- kneeling in front of her, head bowed, groaning and cursing and holding his wounded leg, and she did now what she'd done then: she stepped forward and raised the Tec-9 almost like a club, brought the barrel down and struck the top of Noble's head with the muzzle, splitting his scalp, and squeezed the trigger again.

And again.

And again.

Noble was down, lying on his back, blood pooling around his head now in a halo. Cruz fired five more times into the body, mind and hand working mostly on autopilot. Only two of the five shots hit home.

It didn't matter anyway. He was dead.

Aaron Noble was dead.

Cruz stood over him a moment longer, swaying, swaying, wasps buzzing in her mind, blue fire everywhere, a low, gurgling, moaning sound coming from somewhere deep in her chest, tears streaming down her face. The Tec-9 slipped out of her hand, fell to the end of its strap, and thunked against her hip. She swayed.

Her balance -

_(still standing)_

- faltered.

But she was still on her feet.

She swayed.

Her balance went again. She staggered to the left and came up hard against the wall next to the doorway. She took the brunt on her shoulder and she felt something break again. Sutures, maybe. Or perhaps something deeper, one of those enigmatic surgical pins Noble had suggested. Fresh, moist warmth began to spread there. Jagged pain cut through what was left of her mind but she was beyond it now. A half-coherent -

_(oh Lettie Lettie still standing still - )_

_(- still - )_

_( - standing -)_

- thought skipped across her mind and then her legs folded up under her and she collapsed.

* * *

Sense was gone. Time was gone.

She sat in a semi-slump against the wall and she dreamed. Most were uneasy; more than a few were monstrous.

Once she thought someone was with her. Holding her. Stroking her face. She deliberately imagined it was Lettie and this pleased her. Lettie had been the one who always wanted Maritza to hold her - now Maritza was _being_ held. Perhaps if she opened her eyes she would see her, her face round and healthy, untouched by addiction. The full cheeks, full lips, the pretty, dark, almond-shaped eyes.

Lettie, brushing her cheek, the shelf of her jaw. Wiping the blood away.

She could feel it. It was real.

It was cartilage. It was her left ear, which wasn't much more than a few chewed-up strings of gristle that brushed the side of her face as she breathed.

Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. She had no idea how long and no interest in knowing. Consciousness came and went, the blue fire and the wasps surging with it, receding with it, like the tide.

She was dying.

* * *

And yet she could hear sounds. Mundane sounds. Shuffling, a door opening, footsteps on wood, crunching through debris, a muffled exclamation, a muffled curse that sounded choked and fearful.

Eventually she realized: there was someone in the room with her. Someone besides the corpses of Aaron Noble and Iggy Marchand.

Cruz kept her eyes closed, but the feeling persisted, so she opened them again.

There _was_ someone in the room with her. She saw a figure. She saw it was a man, a man in a hip-length leather jacket and jeans, wet from the rain. He was examining Iggy's body. She could see just a hint of his profile and that was all she needed to know who it was, the solid features and the close-cropped hair and his stance at once familiar to her, and she couldn't believe it, and yet it was true.

It was Maurice Boscorelli.


End file.
